by Dr Bierre

Hello, Wanderer! I'm Bea (Miss Lovecraft), and welcome to my author page! Here you'll find my dearest collection of vivid poetry and (who knows!) enveloping prose.

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by Miss Lovecraft

Grey sky, threat of rain. There will be no sundown tonight; the grey will grow deeper, the clouds swirling into a dirty blackness, and then the night will come. Over the lit streets droplets will fall, a myriad liquid fingers tapping insistently at the windows for insomniacs to turn and gaze, to remember: this is what living under occupation looks like.

Brago stares out the window of his eightieth-story apartment and into the skyline, restless hands clutching emptiness behind his back, eyes glued to the shadow that dominates the horizon – dominates the entire city – trying his best not to glance at his own grim reflection in its gilded cage. Behind him, warm lamplight cascades over unused furniture kept dust-free solely by the tireless toiling of Brago’s mechanical servants, all of whom now silently recharge out of sight.

He prefers it this way, this emptiness, this quietude where there is no one to judge or condemn him, no flagellating words screamed from beneath a podium and no accusing glares but the one cast of glass. Brago walks to the countertop, grabs the first bottle within reach and pours himself a drink without looking at the label; all he knows is that it’s expensive, and that alone is enough to nearly ruin the beginning of his nightly descent into stupor. Again he avoids his own eyes peering from within the crystalline liquid, swallowing in one gulp and letting it burn its way down into his stomach. Then he returns to the window and watches the shadows engulf the sky but for that one obscene shape, that terrible mountain that, even within the deepest darkness, remains.

The shape is everpresent, its ovoid countenance looming over the city even though its stillness is absolute and has been so for at least a decade. So out of place it looks, round where the city skyline is jagged and angular, perversely organic amidst steel and glass, and yet most choose to ignore it, to treat it as just another mundane feature of the metropolis. They turn their heads and move on with their day, never speaking of that which cannot be avoided, never lingering too long on the doom gestating in plain sight. Denial becomes sanctuary, indifference begets peace. This is what a life spent staring down the barrel of a loaded gun looks like.

This much Brago has contributed to. His speeches provoked mixed reactions at first – claps of cautious enthusiasm at the promise of lasting calm and furious peltings fueled by his undeniable betrayal – but it is the message he conveys that keeps the city from erupting into riots: do not interfere and you will be spared. Such is the way of Brago’s benefactors, the absent overlords of the entire planet. His word is now the status quo, his mouth decreeing the intent of their faceless conquerors.

Delusions of martyrdom are always tempting, the transmutation of Brago’s infamy and ostracization into a sweet balm to assuage his guilt. What sweet respite it would be to give his curse meaning, to fool himself into truly believing he is an agent of the greater good, a willful symbol of oppression meant to focus the resentment of the people. Yet Brago knows there is no way out but punishment, no absolution but the one purveyed by the mob of irate citizens who – tired of the occupier and its emissary – may one day strike him down and paint the banner of revolution with his blood.

But for that to happen, rage must overcome fear, fear of the fleshy monolith crowned with stormclouds whose shadow crushes the spirit and snuffs out the dreams of liberation that once flourished in Brago’s heart – dreams he once hoped others would nurture and make manifest. In their anguished absence, the barren soil breeds only hatred.

Brago hates the shape and its shadow, hates its pulsing bioluminescent veins as wide as he is tall and the low rumbling they make when approached like the gurgling of a drowning throat. He hates that it rises beyond even the tallest building in the city, a reminder of how easily civilization can be snuffed out by forces beyond its darkest nightmares, turned to ash and cinders in a single night. He hates that everywhere he looks the abomination is inevitable, and that the apartment its creators gave him looks straight into its heart. He hates himself most of all, a tailored traitor for his own kind, forced to be a voice of intent not his own, locked in a cage of unwanted and undeserved luxury in exchange for lying from his podium every time the oppressor wishes to deliver a message, betraying himself and the memory of his comrades with every breath he takes.

They are two sides of the coin, the shape and Brago – one made to embody terror, the other preaching a false normalcy, both keepers of the strangling status quo the oppressors call peace. And in the dying light of the evening, as the storm within rises to match the one outside, Brago at last meets his reflection’s gaze superimposed on the shape’s faceless visage and understands this truth that joins them both. He breaks down as the sky begins weeping, kneeling to supplicate forgiveness or at least punishment as the remembrance of his first betrayal pours out of his wounds.

In that life long extinguished, Brago is twenty-three summers young and full of righteous wrath. Five years have passed since the first moment of occupation, and every minute of it has been far too long. Tens of biomechanical warships hover over every major city on the planet, skeletal carapaces impervious to what little weaponry Brago’s people have, ventral tendrils twitching and shifting in perpetual vigilance of the populations they conquered the instant they breached the atmosphere. In the streets there is a tension that threatens to erupt into full-blown panic; the only thing stopping it is the certainty that any who would openly show resistance is a dead man walking. In all this time, no envoy has been sent down from the invaders’ spacecraft to address the world, yet they all know who this is: the Emerald Hegemony, unstoppable and pitiless.

Vatrara has been a neutral planet since the moment it gained independence from the Immortal Empire, its people proud of having colonized and terraformed an inhospitable rock into a thriving world of gleaming cities and lush biodomes. Even their joining of the Alliance of Free Worlds was signed with utmost caution, Vatrara’s leaders wary of becoming a cog of yet another imperial machine. Yet when a member of the Alliance is threatened, what do its fellow planets do? They scurry away to play an empty game of diplomacy, a farce meant to give them some semblance of credibility when the result is inevitable: the Emerald Hegemony now owns Vatrara, and that is the sole message its ships relay. No help will come, for no help is possible at all.

The cosmos is ruled by the strong. Treaties are signed and violated again and again, and in the end it is solely the empires that maintain a semblance of order through their expansionist desires. The Immortal Empire, the Solar Dominion, the Emerald Hegemony, the Coalition of Merchant Kingdoms. They are each others’ sole regulator, forced to uphold agreements only by the prospect of endless warfare amongst equals. Everyone else is fair game.

Every news channel on Vatrara is now a pit of hopeless resignation. Authorities advise people to remain calm and go about their day as usual, while experts shoot down any possibility of resisting the invaders by pointing out that Vatrara’s planetary defenses would be quickly overrun through sheer orbital saturation. Conspiracy theories abound that this is a coordinated move with the Immortal Empire: the terror of the Hegemony occupying Vatrara and the Alliance’s powerlessness will scare many other independent planets into flocking towards the seemingly more benign superpower – cold revenge for Vatrara’s independence. There is noise everywhere and it sounds like doom.

Then the inevitable happens and the announcement rancors through the planet like endworld trumpets: the Alliance of Free Worlds has recognized the Emerald Hegemony’s annexation of Vatrara. There will be no further discussion, no attempts to stop them at all. Chaos reigns. Multitudes pour out into the streets to protest and demand their independence be given back, public servants are lynched for their perceived complicity with the invaders, buildings set alight to spell out one last desperate pleading to the pitiless eyes watching from beyond the stars.

Then there is a poisonous calm. The citizens of Vatrara cease tearing each other apart to behold the sole ship descending from the heavens – a viscous aberration carrying a single individual even more repellent than itself: a Xevion, the Hegemony’s diplomatic caste, slithers over its myriad tendrils, its grotesquely engorged brain pulsing with bioluminescent flashes, and opens its serrated beak to hoarsely proclaim to the assembled masses their new overlords’ first decree. “Do not interfere and no harm shall come to you. That is all.”

With that, it returns to the fleet and leaves the people to do what they will. Violence slowly dies down, the truth of the Xevion’s promise made self-evident by the Hegemony’s utter inaction and apparent disinterest towards the planet’s inhabitants. Only when a rogue ship attempts to escape the planet do the limits of that promise reveal themselves in a rain of fiery shrapnel: no one is allowed to leave.

In a matter of weeks after the annexation of Vatrara becomes official, the Hegemony takes over management of everything that reaches or leaves the planet. Supplies, communications, travelers – they all are carefully controlled and vetted, subjected to a rigidity that borders on hermeticism; Vatrara is effectively cut off from the rest of the universe. On the ground, however, life goes on. People gradually return to a semblance of normalcy, preoccupied with their jobs, their families and what mundanities afflicted them before the Hegemony appeared in the skies. The fleet remains static, unmoving and uncaring, each day becoming less of a looming threat and more of an uninteresting blot in the otherwise pristine blue. The new normal settles without a single shot being fired in opposition.

Not everyone is content to ignore the invaders, however. There are those who, misguided by wounded pride and angry at their own helplessness, have resorted to spreading their malaise. In the shadows, cells coalesce and multiply in the streets of hate, waiting for a chance to strike, for a tiny fracture in the Hegemony’s power that can be infiltrated to expose their weakness. Perhaps then, these minds think, the people of Vatrara will rise and liberate themselves; perhaps then the steep cost they dread will become a worthy sacrifice in the name of freedom.

Small acts of protest, messages painted on the street for the tyrants in heaven to read, sabotage and vandalism against suspected sympathizers. Repetition breeds remembrance, forcing the public to keep their eyes glued to the scenery and their eyes attentive to the sound of brewing violence. But no true resistance can take root without a great show of triumph, without a true hit against the oppressor – without things going boom. And when the Hegemony again descends from their fleet and begins constructing obscene alien designs in the heart of every city, the temptation is too powerful for prudence to overcome.

As machines made of bone and sinew begin excavating the ground, laying the foundations of a permanent Hegemony presence, a plot forms for coordinated attacks. Small groups of radicalized youth and grizzled veterans of past conflicts unite under one banner and one rallying cry: Vatrara kli’sari, Vatrara burns free. This is not just a statement of intent, but an admittance to the sacrifice that will follow. Once the explosions go off and the Hegemony sheds its first blood, there will be chaos and death the likes of which Vatrara has never known, war across the entire planet, a baptism by fire over whose ashes the survivors will rebuild and prosper. The Universe and all its imperial powers shall witness this defiance, this triumph, and relent – never again will Vatrara’s independence be threatened.

At least that is what Brago believes when he attends the clandestine rallies, his heart inflamed with every patriotic speech and every promise that no victory exists without sacrifice. He claps when the words reach a high note, stomps his feet at every call of Hegemony blood, and when his chest brims with pride and his hands burn with a desire for action, he rises to the stage and proclaims his undying dedication to the cause even if it means surrendering his very life so others may live free. He is not a particularly talented orator nor does he play the novel idealogue, but his passion is raw and fiery, a spark amidst a swarm carried to every distant land by gusts of raging wind to unleash the inferno.

But rage without tempering, without structure and wit, is pitiful flailing against an opponent far superior to them. That is why reunions soon shift towards planning, scheming and weaving the shape of rebellion. Brago and his fellow co-conspirators dissect the layout surrounding Hegemony construction sites, mapping every entry point and every exit, studying the timing of guard changes and supply runs, committing everything to memory for their execution to go as smooth as possible against a foe too alien to be taken as predictable. Over their heads hangs the unspoken truth that not all of them, if any, will make it out even if their objectives are fulfilled; their quiet acceptance makes invoking the shadow of death unnecessary.

And yet, there is still brightness to be found amidst the grim atmosphere of dedication to the cause. In the weeks and months that follow, Brago finds himself making friends out of doomed men and women, getting to know their lives and their reasons to join the struggle. Some speak of unfulfilled dreams of visiting the stars, of the desire to know themselves unbound by any master; others grind their teeth as they describe the pain of families torn asunder, of the diaspora who left Vatrara without knowing they would never be allowed to come back to their loved ones; still others mutter with despair in their voices but hope in their eyes, hope that the sacrifices of their ancestors will not be rendered vain by this new threat to their freedom.

What moves Brago? He dreams of unblotted skies where the stars are not eclipsed by menacing shadows, of mirth and laughter like the ones his people knew before the Hegemony arrived, of the promised future where the entire cosmos felt within reach. He recalls the teachings of his parents about what independence and sacrifice meant, and the calm with which they passed knowing they had raised a child who would honor them beyond the grave. Every day, as he comes to know his fellow revolutionaries – his friends – Brago becomes more and more convinced that this is the right path, the only path he’s meant to follow. What cause is more righteous than this, the fight to give to others a chance at a better life? Vatrara kli’sari is no mere bloodshed, but the ultimate kindness: to give oneself up so others may live without chains.

It is with this at heart that Brago toils side by side with his comrades, training every night to fight to the last breath, going home with cuts and bruises, assembling and disassembling his gun until he can do it with his eyes closed, running uphill so that his lungs get used to burning, meditating his own death to prepare himself for a fear he knows he does not yet understand. It is with this acceptance that he allows himself to celebrate with them as the date draws near: a quiet, sober reunion to let themselves feel the warmth of their fraternity, to alleviate what shared fears remain and reaffirm that – whatever happens – they will face it together. In these last moments before the storm, Brago looks at the sky and drinks up starlight.

The plan is simple: at the same hour, each team will target one of the Hegemony’s sites, kill the guards and place a high-yield explosive. Detonations will occur near-simultaneously, following dissemination of a pre-recorded statement through every major news network and virtual channel. As a thousand fireballs consume the oppressor’s facilities, the people of Vatrara will know who the instigators were and be given a choice: to rise up against the Hegemony or continue to suffer in silence. This, the revolutionaries hope, will be the first shot in their war for liberation.

It all goes awry very fast. Brago and his comrades suffer minimal casualties against the outnumbered Mkeun guards; their freakishly strong muscles and armor-plated skin makes them deadly foes, but a couple of well-placed high-caliber rounds soon puts most of them out of commission. As the surviving Mkeun struggle against their faster and more nimble attackers, Brago and five of his friends push onwards into the fleshy edifice, carrying the bomb with them. Thick humidity clings to their bodies upon passing the maw-like entrance, a fetid stench clawing at their nostrils from the depths.

How far down does this thing go? Brago wonders as he runs on sinewy ground that seems to recoil and twitch under his feet, his torch barely able to penetrate the vapors rising from veiny streams of green ichor that flow towards the unseen nadir of this abominable construct. They must be very deep now, for the sounds of the fighting outside are no more and only the viscous drip drip drip and the muted heaves of the living, breathing ceiling remain. A knot begins forming in Brago’s stomach, and the weight of the bomb seems to increase a hundredfold as the feeling of having walked into a trap stabs his every nerve.

When the walls come alive and the gurgling screams of his comrades echo through the faint bioluminescence of the thing’s innards, Brago runs, stumbling over puddles that reek of amniotic fluid, feet half-entangled in the spilled intestines of still-living men and women who beg to be killed before the clawed chitinous appendages that emerge from every surface of the tunnel continue their tortuous flaying. Gunfire dies out and the wet sounds of cutting and breaking punctuate the screams of the dying. Brago whimpers as he falls and drops the bomb, skin torn by barbed tendrils that ensnare and constrict him, forced to crawl with all his might until he leaves behind pieces of his own flesh. He’s not going to make it any deeper, and he sure as death will not live to tell the tale. His finger is almost on the bomb’s trigger, body stretched so much he can feel tendons about to burst.

Vatrara kli’sari! Vatrara kli’sari! He screams through burning tears. Only now, in the face of true pain and death, does he realize he must finish this not for some misguided sense of patriotism, but because this is the only way for the agony to mean anything at all.

Then, an iron grip closes over his nape and pulls him up, the tendrils relenting as a new kind of pain begins. Brago has only a few instants to gaze into the square into the cold, pitch black eyes of the Mkeun before it drags him off into the depths, crushing the bomb underfoot. All is lost, and yet a greater despair is yet to come.

The stench is the first thing Brago notices – acrid, musky, clinging to every surface, burrowing its way down his throat and nostrils. Next comes the chittering, the sound of multitudes shifting, of appendages clicking together. His sight darts from one place to another, peering through the dim and greenish luminescence until he can make out shapes and movement. When his eyes adjust, he witnesses them in all their repugnant glory: countless polyp-like Uthraan blanket the entire ground, walls and ceiling, a living tapestry throbbing with bioelectric signals as they transmit information from one body to another in quick succession, fed by streams of liquefied nutrients pumped through thick arteries into their slimy forms.

At the center of the chamber, an engorged thing presides over the moist cacophony of biomass. It has no eyes or mouth, no ears or limbs. It simply remains still, crucified by a web of feeding tubes adjusted by skitterish Yhranc engineers, suspended in a cartilaginous membrane brimming with fluids to keep it from overheating as the Uthraan’s signals coalesce and climax within its labyrinthine ridges. It is a brain, a brain so colossal that Brago feels like an insect looking up at a boot for the first and final time.

A hoarse, labored voice rattles him, his entire body cringing as if someone had dragged a jagged knife over each of his bones.

You dare to interfere. You wish to be harmed.

“I…” Brago pants in the Mkeun’s grasp. “I will not live under your boot. None… none of us will…”

Irrational. You were given peace in exchange for your inaction. You reject this at your own peril. Why?

“We will not… we will not submit… to an invader. We will burn you. We will burn all of you! Vatrara kli’sari!”

Silence follows, a silence in which there should be laughter – maniacal, ironic – yet all Brago hears is absence. Then, a droning, a collective drawing of air into atrophied throats. The Mkeun, the Yhranc, the Uthraan, they all speak in unison.

All of us? There is no us. There is me, and me alone.

Brago beholds in horror as light inundates the room, each of the multitude’s brains glowing with their shared bioelectric mantra, their single voice: I am the Hegemony. I am total.

No individuality, no joining of minds. Not insects in a colony, but cells in a body – a single, massive organism scattered across the stars in parts separate but occupied by the same perverse will. This is what Hegemony means. There is it, and there is everything else – everyone else.

The microbe whose name is Brago struggles to comprehend this truth, akin to an ant who sees five crushing fingers and struggles to form the picture of one destroyer hand. He and his comrades never had a chance, and had they succeeded it wouldn’t even amount to a scratch.

“Why am I still alive?” He begs of the Hegemony.

To witness. To preach.

A sharpness forces its way into Brago’s frontal lobe, a searing-white pain befitting the ultimate violation of the self. He screams and screams, but he also sees.

He sees a universe on fire, the stars burning with hate as immense fleets emerge from the darkness and blast each other into debris. Doomsday weapons shatter planets and consume even the screams of the dying, cities ravaged by orbital bombardments as the empires wage their endless wars of conquest. Only when they have run out of firepower, when life itself tethers on the brink of extinction and the warriors gaze on their works and lament, only then do they appeal to reason: this is the path to annihilation, and no triumph can be erected on a pile of ash.

The powers build a new order and arbitrate it, but the ghost of war looms everpresent. Deterrence – fear of open war – is the only way forward amongst equals. It is the key to lasting peace, to a shared prosperity, and to further expansion. One day, perhaps, without anyone noticing, an empire well-fed on peace will grow large and mighty enough to finally stand alone over the corpses of its rivals.

Such is the way of the Hegemony: to root itself deep where no one can remove it, to expand to the farthest confines of the cosmos so that even the halving of its body is nothing but an inconvenience. Here, the great brain node – one of billions scattered throughout its conquered worlds – links together the countless cells of the creature that is empire, giving them another foothold to challenge new frontiers, its true lair belied by hundreds of simulacra so that none of its rivals may destroy it without burning down the whole planet in their frantic attempts to locate it. Here, beneath the ground that birthed him, Brago has the misfortune of hitting bullseye.

Do not interfere, the Hegemony says as the vision ends. This was my command. You could have spent your life in blissful ignorance, yet you chose to defy me. Now you see the truth, and it will haunt you. That was my mercy unto you, my meat shields. My subjects. My hostages.

Brago screams and gags and weeps and laughs. He laughs at his own pitifulness, at his own self-delusion, swallowing the truth in great gulps of air, digging his fingers into his own face and ripping until he bleeds. It was always going to end like this. No way out… no way out!

But hostages can outlive their usefulness and outweigh the cost of my leniency. And if you will not be of use, why should I not turn your world to cinders? With or without you, when the dust settles, I will still be here. The choice is yours, and you… you can be the first to show me why I should let you live.

In the present, Brago weeps his eyes out. He remembers it all – how he broke, how he yielded to the Hegemony and accepted the role he has played ever since: to be a mouthpiece of its will, to preach its gift of mercy, of a second chance Vatrara does not deserve. He can still hear the screams, those of the booing crowds as they pelt and condemn him, but also those his comrades yell from beyond the grave. If only they understood! If only they knew what the only other option was!

The Hegemony has continued its work unimpeded. It has recruited more people like Brago, and any opposition is quashed by Vatrara’s people themselves. But it has also made good on its threats: in each city, a great ovum darkens the horizon, a great egg containing the Hegemony’s answer to any further defiance. It would take the slightest provocation, the tiniest show of rebellion for it to hatch and unleash the doom made flesh. And as the colossi ravage the world, the universe and all its peoples will gaze with dread at the spectacle of fire and ruin, at the one end there can be for those who threaten the Hegemony.

And as for Brago, what can he do if not repeat this nightly ritual of blame and humiliation? What can he do but forsake his spirit and belch the lies that keep him and his people alive? For this is the truth he has accepted: in the shadow of the Hegemony there is no victory and no sacrifice, only merciful surrender.

by Din-Bidor

by PickleMonstiez

by PickleMonstiez

Whoever tells you dystopia comes with no perks has certainly never visited New Gomorrah. A place as cursed as this one is bound to have a nightclub or bar on every other corner because how else are people to cope with the fact that their entire planet is nothing but a gray and neon sprawl choking on end-stage capitalism? A healthy dose of sex, drugs and alcohol will keep you running (on fumes, but running anyways) through the end of the world and then some, through the tortuous caprices of editors and the looming threat of a deadline; the fact that the Viper’s Fang shared my wisdom was merely a coincidence.

As soon as the purple sky stopped weeping acid rain, I made my way out of the hostel and headed for the nearest watering hole. On the way I bought some clothes to better blend in – a bright neon yellow jacket, pants with enough pockets to stash a month's supply of narcotics, and a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses that somehow did not make me blind in the perpetual twilight of New Gomorrah. Ripped straight out of a bad Blade Runner copycat, I looked just like a native of this steel and silicone shithole.

I palpated the gun hidden below my undershirt; seventeen rounds nested in the clip in case my intended interviewees proved less than hospitable or some random junkie wanted to get too frisky. I had a second gun tucked in my left boot and another one closer to my cloaca than I would have liked – I would rather go down in a blaze of lead and hellfire than submit to another cavity search.

Five blocks down, I turned a corner and slammed face first into a strip of clubs and strip clubs that seemed to stretch all the way into the horizon – nothing but loud music, cheap drinks and bright holographic adverts for tits, ass and all the other flesh that would tingle my loose standards were I not on the clock. Once again, being a connoisseur of decadence played to my advantage: I instinctively knew any of these places offered a fifty-fifty chance of spiked alcohol and organ theft, and yet the real danger was wasting my time. The Viper's Fang does not stick anywhere for long, so any wrong choice of a joint meant missing my one shot.

As I prowled the strip, I made a mental scan of the different venues and trimmed my possible choices. Beaumont’s was too loud; there were not enough breaks in-between lousy techno beats to weave a scheme. Mnemonic was too high-end; when you're aiming for asymmetric warfare, money is always an issue. Fourth Law was too distracting; the tits on that robot chick could zap even a priest into carnal submission.

There.

Five drunken idiots gathered around another two in front of a small pub, cheering on as the pair traded blows with their mechanized fists, each punch sending small shockwaves that made the ground thrum against the discordant cacophony of lousy heavy metal music playing from inside the venue. I glanced at the half-lit letters that announced the place’s name – Hotwire Hell – and checked all the boxes: violent enough for a bunch of bloodthirsty roughnecks who fancied themselves revolutionaries, check; cheap drinks and edgy music, check; lowbrow as could be, check. The odds were good with this one. I straightened my posture, puffed my chest and strutted past the urban gladiators and into the stinking black.

Although the principle of might makes right is ever-present in the game of multiversal politics, ruthlessness alone is often insufficient to win in the long term. The big fish of Midgard – the Immortal Empire, the Emerald Hegemony and the Solar Dominion – know this very well and have diversified their strategies to remain supreme: diplomacy can be much more useful than a doomsday weapon, and the hand outstretched in friendship often brandishes an edge far sharper than the blade of open warfare. Politics is the playground of alpha predators, the banquet table where empires gorge themselves fat without paying any mind to the vermin that crawls under their feet in search of scraps.

Yet even bottom feeders form their own hierarchies, building kingdoms of grime and shadow. Crime syndicates, terrorist cells and petty chiefdoms, they all play the same game of power and profit that makes the Multiverse go round. On occasion, one of these small fish might grow large or bold enough to pose a legitimate threat to the big fish, and this will be its trial by fire: it will either carve for itself a place at the top of the food chain or be devoured by the overlords for daring to disturb their precious status quo. The wheel turns forevermore, and the would-be challengers bide their time.

Not that any of this shit matters to the Fangs, of course. As soon as I went through the door, I felt the impulse to wipe my ass with my draft and flush it down the toilet, then go live someplace no editor or agent could ever find me and drag me kicking and crying to explain myself back at their office. A hairy mountain blocked my way, four heads taller than me, muscle straining its pelt almost to the point of bursting, fists still clutching the victim whose blood pooled at his feet, eyebrows on his weathered simian face arched with a mixture of surprise and annoyance at my interruption, lips curving into a grimace as he spoke the fear of God into my cold-blooded heart.

"Do you mind?" The creature said with the tone of someone caught using a bathroom stall. "I will get to you when I’m done here. You the candy man? I don't recall any lizards."

I tried my best not to reach into my pockets or look at the poor sod who gagged and begged through a broken jaw, then did what I know best: take advantage of any situation involving drugs.

"“Depends," I said. "You the Fang who called?"

He drove his foot into his plaything's knee and bent it the wrong way; the crunch was drowned by a shallow scream, the man’s voice fizzling out into sobbing as the troglodyte finally let go. Then the overgrown gorilla turned to me and said:

"Let's go, then. Everyone’s been waiting for you."

On the insistence of my editor and their lawyers, I will state that I have never sold narcotics, purchased narcotics for anything but my own recreational use, or otherwise profited from the commerce of narcotics. I have no reason to lie: any time I've given anyone drugs, it's always been for free. That said, I know of no law that makes it illegal to pretend to be a drug dealer. It's not like I had a choice: it was either playing along until I could figure out a way to state my true intent or getting my head ripped off my shoulders by one of my intended interviewees before I could even pull out my recorder.

The brute led me to a dark corner where some ten Fangs lounged in various degrees of stupor; a few heads turned towards me as my feet met the empty bottles that littered the floor. They were as ugly as I thought they would be: ragged leather jackets that looked like they had spent some days in a landfill, unkempt beards and pelts, fingernails black with oily gruel, faces that I wouldn’t kiss for all the whisky in New Gomorrah. All of them were packing guns which hung lazily from their belts where everyone could see; at first glance they looked ridiculous, but few things are as dangerous as a trigger-happy drunkard with a plasma blaster. Ungainly, unsightly, unfuckable. My unfortunately sober brain quickly decided I had no way out but through them – whatever happened now, there was no turning back.

“Candy man’s here,” said my guide. Then he pushed me forward and into the deep blue neon spotlight.

The person that looked like the leader – an educated guess I made on the basis that he was the biggest, ugliest and meanest individual in the room – placed two rolls of bills on the table. He dragged his tongue through the miasma of hard liquor that bubbled in his mouth, words starting out as a drawl and ending up in a blurted torrent.

“It’ll be two Naxatras vials, three Snappers, fifty grams of Fleck, fifteen rolls of whatever you lizards smoke nowadays, and a flask of absinthe. I think this should about cover it.”

Part of me wanted to gape my mouth like an idiot, and the other wanted to squeal like the first girl I ever fingered. Once again, my stash proved to be the difference between triumph and failure, between sleazing my way into the next chapter and my adventure ending abruptly with a knuckle sandwich. With skill honed through years of substance abuse, I unloaded everything the Fang had required of me; though it was tempting, I did not pocket the money.

“On the house,” I said to surprised and pleased murmurs.

The leader of the group did not seem as enthused. He leaned in closer, what smarts or paranoia he had pushing its way up from the bottom of his intoxicated brain.

“I ain’t ever heard of a dealer who gives his product for free. Whatever you’re playing at, spill it, or I spill your guts all over the floor.”

“Oh, please,” I answered; it’s a true professional’s signature to handle aggression smoothly. “I know what you’re thinking, but seriously: do I look like a fucking narc to you? With the amount of stuff I’m carrying, The Man would lock me up until this planet shits itself and dies.”

More murmurs, a couple of laughs; I was still on track, so I went all in.

“No, no. I’m not a narc and I’m not a dealer; I’m just a lizard with a gizzard and a really sweet business pitch for you all.”

“And what would that be, mister…?”

“Gathers, Duke Gathers. And what I’m here to offer you is some well-earned exposure,” I grinned and prepared my next act: if there’s something R’lek taught me is how to suck up to imbeciles to get my story. “See, I’ve been hot on your trail for some time now, following your exploits and successes. And yet, I find myself alone in my admiration. It seems the Multiverse at large just hasn’t taken notice of you.”

Groans and muttering. Not even half a breath in and I already had them eating off my palm.

“Yeah, I know. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s the truth. It’s also fucking unfair if you ask me: a group of uncompromising freedom fighters such as yourselves should at the very least enjoy some infamy, yet even those assholes in the Serpent’s Forearm are more known than you. But do not worry – this is where I come in. How do you like the sound of your own biopic, an in-depth dive into the triumphs and struggles of the Viper’s Fang?”

“A book? You’re talking about a book, aren’t you?” Wow, they caught up fast, a credit to their kind.

“Indeed. Think about it: your names and actions forever inscribed where everyone can learn about them, the Library itself forced to keep your record despite their petty disapproval of you. What greater triumph is there than your memory living on within the very guts of your nonbelievers? And in exchange I ask only that you allow me to experience your lives firsthand. I promise that I won’t be a burden and that I’ll make sure to record everything down to the dirty little details.”

The leader and the ape – now I realized he was the second in command – whispered in each other’s ear and nodded. Beneath my clothes, the guns seemed to palpate in anticipation of everything breaking down at the last minute and having to shoot my way out.

“And if we allow you to join us… you’d keep us supplied?” The ape said. “We need to make sure you can pull your own weight.”

“Of course,” I said. Not what I was expecting, but I’d take it regardless. “My stash’s big enough to keep you rolling for as long as you need.” It was not, but that was a problem for tomorrow’s Duke Gathers. For now, I had my victory, so I might as well enjoy it.

“You sure are a strange one, Gathers, but I think we can use a chronicler.” The leader stood and extended a gnarly, coarse hand. “My name is Kisla. Welcome to the Viper’s Fang.”

I wish I could tell you what followed – I really do – but the never-night of New Gomorrah and the stroboscopic noise of the Hotwire Hell blurred my memory into a vomit-shaped puddle of light and sensation, drugs trickling down my arms into the expectant mouths and nostrils of the Fangs like I was a messianic purveyor of narcotic deliverance. Nightmarish faces and malformed laudations floated above me, a cacophony of ecstatic moans and bloodthirsty roars coalescing as the trip funneled me down the twisting paths of my own brain cortex and deeper into the purulent core of our celebration. And as our debauchery raged in all its perverted glory and the Fangs bobbed and twisted and clashed in their orgy of unleashed endorphins, a feeling took root somewhere in my amygdala, flashes of yellow making me jolt and gag with the overwhelming weight of what I had gotten myself into, screaming of my damnation and what a good time it was going to be.

It felt something like this:

Then I spiraled up, up into the endless ceiling and the promised paradise of my own glorious disconnect.

by Din-Bidor

"I am a weapon. A blade employed by mother creation, brought down to slaughter the black filth."

—Silas Wulfgar

The murderous intent of the sun on that strange day was sickening. Absolutely detestable. And the city of scholars? Excuse me? This place? That could not be true. How was the infrastructure so terrible as to not allow fresh air to flow into the markets and establishments?

Either the city was a lie, or this city was made into the city of scholars far later than its initial creation by the moronic architects who had it made.

No matter. The one redeeming quality this place had was that library. That great, beautiful library. Truly, there were none like it. Every time I lay eyes on it, I am swallowed by it's perfect magnitude…

A large, dark obelisk. Massive in every way imaginable. Making my way inside, as always, is a simple procedure, a single payment of a somewhat large silver coin. One side imprinted with my face on it, and the other, the emblem of the library.

This is how you show them you're welcome here.
How you are not a stranger.

Not many could enter the library, it was a luxury reserved for a few of us. The nobility, elite. Besides our clothes, knowledge is also what helped us separate ourselves from the… Lesser fortunate, so to say.

The whole, recent, world-falling apart event hasn't helped much, admittedly, now every other bastard possesses some kind of core. Thankfully, these people will never be able to learn how to make proper use of it, the fools. Education is, evidently, also something for the noble.

Back to the few members of the library, I have knowledge on most of them, after all, we must stick together, help eachother. However, there are few I know close to nothing of. This is not an issue with those who come here rarely, but there is one who frequents this place more than even I, Hock of Ycca, of the noble family Maximilien.

Him I know nothing of. I know not even the name of his family. Who is he? What business has he doing here? Call me nosy all you like, and that curiosity killed the cat, but I will be fast to tell you that satisfaction brought it back.

Today is the day I speak to that man.

He always reads books pertaining to our biology and cores. I know where he sits, reading these books. I will walk row after row after row of shelves to find him. I walked swiftly, but, of course, silently. I would not dare disturb my fellows…

There he was.

And there he sat, he hadn't even noticed me, actually. The clothes he wore were not so much different from mine. He wore a stiff collar shirt with a cravat, and a waistcoat over it, though his trousers were strange, they seemed to go a little higher than usual, and they wrapped more tightly around his waist… Which was on the slimmer side.

If I hadn't known any better, I'd might have thought he was a woman! But alas, this section was preserved for men only. The women had their own sector, you see. I am drifting, I will return to the theme at hand.

And to the side, there were his other clothes. His coats, a large, wide brimmed hat, satchels… Why would he carry these all the way here? How did he not sweat himself to death on the path to this location? I barely made do with my own clothes, and I wore no coats!

I realized I had began to wander off in my mind, and I chose to approach the man at once.

"Greetings!" I said, a grimace shaped on my face.
"Greetings?" He replied, clear confusion on his face. He continued:"Pardon me, do I know you?"

I felt a bit awkward, I had to recollect myself, it was… Difficult, to lead a conversation with him without losing focus, for some reason.

"No, no. You do not know me, and that is sort of my issue. I, Hock Maximilien, have great connections with all the visitors on this sector, except for you, and I would like to change that. So, I would like to have a formal meeting with you!"

"Ah, I understand. That is completely understandable."

He suddenly stood up. Goodness.
Why was he so tall?
Not inhumanly tall, but taller than the average.

He raised a pale, vascular hand. One of a size fitting of his tall, slender stature.

"My name is Silas Wulfgar. You may also refer to me as Silas of Morvathia, or simply Silas. That is what acquaintances call me. I do not enjoy this… Overly serious, formal environment so many nobles try to keep up."

His voice was… Something else. Captivating, almost. Pleasant.

"Ah! Yes, completely agreeable!" I did not agree, but for some reason I felt compelled to agree. I felt as though if I did not, he would crush me. The grip he had on my hand was that of iron.

"My name is Hock Maximilien, as you know, or Hock of Ycca. I am a younger member at this establishment, twenty years old."

"I thought you were older."

He let my hand go.

"I myself am seventeen."

Seventeen? Is this reality?

"That cannot be true."

"You're not the first to make that claim, now, unless you would like to discuss the topic of cores and biology, I would appreciate it if you would leave me to my studies."

Who does this arrogant kid think he is? I'll show this Wulfgar his place. Whatever plebian blood that is.

"I would like to test your knowledge on the matters, actually. I believe my understanding thus far surpasses yours greatly, as I have studied this for many years myself."

"I doubt this. Try."

He replied faster, and he sounded more tired. Maybe offended?

"What gene in the body is responsible for the presence of a core in the offspring of a sorcerer pair?"

"There is no direct correlation between genetics and whether or not the sorcerer identity of a human is dependent on genetics passed down from the parents."

"Excuse me? Is this some sort of pseudoscience?"

"No, it is a simple observation. Current Leofrician biologists claim that the core essence allele is dominant, the one responsible for it's presence, which wouldn't be so unrealistic if coreless, normal humans didn't give birth to sorcerers. How would the sorcerous child inherit dominant genetics from parents who possess the recessive gene?

The truth of the matter, is that the coreless are such an oppressed people, that not even biologist core users possess the gall to step off their high chair and try to sympathise SOMEHOW with these people to learn more and… I… I!-…"

He began taking steps towards me, and his voice gained more and more weight and emotion as he kept on speaking, frankly, it had me feeling a bit lightheaded and afraid… You'd think he'd start choking, or fall over, or SOMETHING!

… Admittedly, I did fall over backwards, trying to get away from him the closer he got…

He was gesticulating a lot, and at the end of his breath, his finger was raised upwards, likely gesturing towards the high chairs of the biologists about whom he spoke. Also, his other hand was launched at his own throat, as he heaved heavily for air. He developed a sweat, as well.

"I apologize… It wasn't my intention to gain such a volume, and attract so many eyes…"

His voice returned to his more calm, charming self. Though less charming this time.

"That is okay… I wouldn't have ever thought you were so passionate about this subject…"

Surprisingly, as I tried getting back up, he actually reached a hand out for me to grab, and he helped me back on my feet.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

"So, do you have a shorter conclusion, perhaps?"

"Yes. I have to admit that, despite my faith in my understanding, I can very well be wrong. My knowledge is limited, but I do seek to enlighten myself to the greatest capacity."

"Splendid, how about instead of quizzing you, we can just have a normal discussion of biology. Say, what else do you know?"

"I find the corrilic system quite intriguing, I must admit. Or, what was the other name?"

"Some guy who discovered it, you know, like how they name organs after the people who discovered them, and such."

"Yes yes. But, the corrilic system is quite interesting to me. What is essentially a secondary lymphatic system, carries the necessary.. fluids, I suppose, to and fro through the body so we may perform sorcery. Korelin, was it? Produced in the… Pancreas."

"It is quite fascinating what we already know that we can do with extracted korelin. We are very curious beasts."

"I wonder how they got to extracting korelin out of the body."

A long pause followed that sarcastic statement. It was obvious how that korelin was extracted. A cruel process, I like to refer to it as.. "splaying". The body is… Splayed open, but kept alive via highly advanced technology, medicine, or simple sorcery, and the pancreas is attached to some tubes. Following that, the brain is somehow stimulated into producing korelin. The process doesn't kill the hooked up person, but it's certainly not ethical…

"Myes… Yes… Erm… Anyhooow… It is rather late, is it not? How about we take our leave?"

"Ah, that's true. Verily, let us go."

Silas then reached for his items. And soon, we left. It was then that I realized that, that much time hadn't passed at all. Yet it was this dark already. How odd?

"Pray tell, Hock Maximilien, what goals do you have?"

I didn't expect that. Splendid question.

"Oh, that's a good question. I have a vision set in front of me. I shall learn more of cores, advance the scientific world of cores, and become the head of the Maximilien family."

"Ahh, wait. Wait wait. Maximilien, that's like.. Valtr Valentin Maximillian, right? Just a different spelling."

"Ahh, great you should mention that. While I am related to his greatness, this family is more of… A distant branch of the bloodline. The family tree split before the great Valtr Valentin Maximillian was born."

"A great scientist, he was."

"Indeed. And what are your goals and aspirations, Silas Wulfgar?"

"There is nothing I desire less than to burn all my bridges and live as free as a bird, freeing others on my course to the end of my life. Who knows where my passion and love will take me?"

Hm. Sure, but no need to suddenly be so poetic.

"I will make my name known, I will be remembered. I will be helpful to the kind, and unforgiving in the face of evil."

Sure you will.

"And I'll crush those who deem their fellow man inferior."

Sure

"Free."

You

"Save."

Will.

"End."

"Hello? Hello? Hock?"

Oh, oops. Was lost in my thoughts for a second.

"Huh? Oh, yes. Great goals you have there. Fame is something I'd like to achieve one day as well."

"You know, perhaps, one day, well help each other achieve these goals. Splendid meeting you, Hock Maximilien. I have to go the other way from here."

Ah, has he kept walking with me despite going the wrong way?

"Oh, uh. Yes, that's… Yes. Go. It was a pleasure getting to know you as well, Silas Wulfgar. Let us meet again?"

"Certainly, tomorrow?"

"And not an hour later!"

Not much time since then has passed. Only took two weeks. Two weeks to the day I last saw Silas.

I walk into the library again, expecting to see Silas, reading up on his last books of interest, but yet he wasn't there. He was usually much earlier here than me. Hours. Many hours earlier.

Admittedly, I believe I had actually become a little bit fond of him at this point.

He'd come a little later, looking a little rough and tired out. As though he'd been pushing stuff around, or hauling heavy items.

"Greetings, Hock!"

"Ahhh, Silas. What's gotten you looking so rough?"

"Ahh, some merchant needed to move some boxes. Say, Hock. How about it, we stay a little later today?"

"Feeling studious today? Sure. We can remain here until late."

Unfortunate decision. The day went by as expected. Chitter and chatter. We read books. Exchange opinions, have a laugh, maybe some delicacy or drink in between outside the library.

I recall that night being a bit colder. Me and Silas stood outside the large black monolith, discussing what else. Of course, about that damned subject known as biology.

The cold night enabled Silas to wear all his best layers. Only his best coat, scarf, a long, horizontal hat most splendid…

"Hock…"

"Yes?"

"This is the first bridge I burn."

"What?"

It only took a second. The library caught on fire, nearly instantly. I saw the flames rise and grow, from the base to the very top. It grew from a torch, to a bonfire, to a burning pyre, and then, to a burning tower.

"… Why? H-how even? WHY?!"

I rushed at him, my hands reaching to rip into his throat. I wasn't even certain that this was his doing, but his calm, somewhat happy expression despite the tragedy happening to his right gave me everything I needed. But alas, I didn't even see his leg coming, as he kicked me in the chest, leaving me breathless on the floor, grasping for breath.

"That korelin thing. You know, how they are able to infuse korelin into fat to keep it stored for longer. You told me all about it. Thankfully, I didn't have to make any of it myself, a simple purchase is all I needed to make to acquire as much as I wanted."

Oh, that's why he was late today…

WHY DID I SHARE ANYTHING WITH HIM?

"As for why… Well. Good question. I learned everything I wanted to know from this library."

WHERE ARE THE GUARDS? WHY IS NOBODY COMING? WHERE IS HELP?

"Nothing. These sciences don't bother me anymore. I realized I can discover and see for myself. This is mostly biased, propaganda-infested trash. For as long as I let that black tower stand, I'd have to live with the fact I did nothing to prevent the spread of lies and hatred."

I DESPISE YOU, SILAS.

"Go on, speak what putrid words you have for me."

I cleared my throat, and got ready to speak…

But nothing came out.

"I… I don't understand…"

"It doesn't concern you… It doesn't even slightly affect your life. You are NOBILITY! WE ARE NOBILITY! WE-"

"Yes. I understand. But the poverty and inequality in this city serves as proof of the reason for why I did what I did. This library was the place filled with the very nobility that let the lesser fortunate starve and die right by the entrance to this place."

"Look, Hock. I enjoyed my time studying and learning new things with you. I am certain there are more cities out there, with even greater libraries-"

"If there are more that do the same, what's the point of burning just one?"

I quickly managed to say, and he smiled to it.

"This is merely the beginning. I don't have to burn all buildings down alone. Not soon, I am sure."

He curled his thumb and pointer finger together, and put them into his mouth, producing a loud whistle. Something in the distance awoke, and rapidly began making its way here. Silas began taking steps down to the road, the one that merchants take across places.

"You must be wondering, the reason nobody's come yet, is because of the fact I've just been blocking out the view. See?"

That hardly even matters right now.
I wasn't even thinking about that anymore.

He said, waving his hand into the air, as the air seemed to ripple. Or something translucent in the air did. These were… Ambient core essence particles? He could manipulate pure, ambient core essence? What? No, no, this couldn't be. And he was leaving?

"I'll let the veil fall down in a couple of seconds, so you better make a run to safety. So you, you know. Don't tarnish your family's name by being framed as the one to have burnt the place to the ground, you know?"

WHY ARE YOU SO CARELESS?

I quickly got back on my feet, and ran to him. No way I would let him go. No. I couldn't. He was… Such… A waste. A prodigy. Wasted on this foolish idea, this stubborn, MORONIC idea of altruism.

CARE.

But alas, whatever creature he summoned forth as his steed had finally arrived, and he had gotten atop it.

BE REMORSEFUL.

"Farewell, Hock. May you achieve your dreams. Maybe you'll learn to see the truth, one day."

FEEL REGRET.
HAVE DOUBT.

"NO! DON'T GO!"

A wave and a grin was all I got, before his strange, dark steed neighed and ran away.

That is when the screams came, as people finally began to see the burning library.

I was gone before anyone caught sight of me.

Silas. You naive fool.

May you achieve your goals.

And may I be one of the hands that tears you to shreds once the day comes.

Silas.

END OF PROLOGUE 2

by SolSourSop

by carolynn w

"There exists no such depravity as the depravity of the cold, failed GOD, that swiftly lost its interest in its own creation."

—-Quote by Yakub "Paracelsus" Magnus, Epialchemist of the Sanctua Anomalia.

The howl of wind and storm was deafening outside the large and spacious inn. From within, patrons and workers delighted in the warmth of the eatery, their firewood sure to not run out, as folks took turns grabbing sticks and small logs, and casting them into various fireplaces located in the cozy shelter.
Food came and went, and drinks flowed, just another tiring day of working for the common man, and an evening spent full of amusement and relaxation. Though it was known that changes would come with the arrival of the colder months, as evidenced by the sharp, freezing winds outside.

The first strange thing to occur that evening, however, was the distant sounds of a galloping horse.

Surely, nobody could've stolen a horse from the stables, at this rate, it'd be impossible to open the locks on the stalls, they've been frozen to oblivion!
That would have meant the horse was likely coming from outside their little town. A passerby on a horse? They do not mind. So long as no trouble is caused, and they leave soon… These villagers do not take kindly to outsiders.

The galloping became louder as the horse came closer. The people could not ignore it any longer, the chatting of the villagers slowly became silent as some tried to listen to the sound, hoping it would start decreasing in intensity soon.

Then, at the peak of its intensity, closest to the in, the galloping stopped, the neigh of a mighty horse was heard, as well as the sound of strong, large hooves hitting against rock. Beyond that, nothing could be heard besides for the howl of the wind. Everyone knew what was to come, the silence in the inn took over.

And then, the doors opened, and a figure entered into the building. It could be described as tall, and properly clad for a vagabond. Prepared, ready for a trek, dressed for the cold seasons. The face was covered in a thick scarf, and a large, soft headdress. But something about the way they moved seemed odd, as though they had an injury, they appeared a bit… Misshapen, as well. The figure reached for their scarf, pulling it ahead of their face, but not in a way that would reveal their facial features.

"As per order of the honorable house Wulfgar, the ninth son of the Lord Godfrey, namely, Silas Wulfgar, has been deemed guilty of treachery of the Wulfgar name and their values, and has been effectively exiled and sentenced to death. Staying true to tradition, the family has set Silas free in order to hunt him down and execute in ritual. However, Silas, according to the trusted Crows of the family, has also been accused of utilising arts forbidden in the hunt in order to gain an advantage and gain a chance at successful escape…

Therefore, the honorable house Wulfgar has issued both a warning and a capture warrant. If you do not possess the means to subdue the target, it is advised you stay inside and dim the lights. Those foolish enough to dare and wager an attempt at capturing the target, are welcome to try, but injuries, collateral damages and deaths will not be compensated for by the house Wulfgar. A large prize awaits whoever captures the target however. Large enough to afford any-"

Despite the strong and charismatic voice of the stranger being a pleasure to listen to, one of the villagers chose to interject. There he stood, his voice louder, more abbrassive. A mercenary hired by the village to protect from the occasional, stronger enemy… His name was Alexander, slightly darker in skin tone than the rest of the blank villagers, toned by hard farm work. Dressed more fancily than the rest, in a thick, long, brown wooly coat.

"And does the 'honorable' house Wulfgar have any way of explaining how strong this threat is?"

He said honorable in an exaggerated manner, clearly mocking the emissary. Everyone in this room knew of the Wulfgar nobility, and they disliked them greatly. They've presented them with difficulty after difficulty for years now.

The emissary replied, seemingly unbothered by the interjection.

"The target is said to have passed the military training of the Wulfgar armies, but nothing beyond that. The Crows have stated that the dirty tricks employed by the target, however, have turned him into a threat comparable to a ravenous pack of dire wolves…"

Alexander's face brightened with a warm, large smile. And with this, some chuckles in the room arose. A pack of dire wolves? Seriously?

"A pack of wolves? Surely, you don't think this threat is one I cannot take care of by myself, a core user, one of fire."

There was a second of silence where the emissary said nothing. A core user wasn't uncommon, but this was unexpected. These were common humans commissioning a core user. Usually, the common man saw magic as something sinister, a thing of shamans, charlatans, tricksters. But these seemed rather progressive, apparently. Before he could say something again, Alexander swung his hand, a flash of fire cutting through the air, extinguishing right in front of the emissary, burning his scarf slightly, and his fingers too, seeing as he was pulling on his scarf in order to speak more freely. The inn roared in laughter, before finally calming down again.

The emissary spoke again.

"Very well. It is of good news to know this town is in good hands. I will leave you people to enjoy your evening now. I will hammer some posters of the criminal to the townpost outside, and I will be quick to leave. Farewell."

The emissary bothered not to wave as he left, having received more than enough angry glances to know he was overstaying his welcome. Once the door closed, the villagers exploded right back into joy and conversation, this time, Alexander's name rung through the inn as they treated him like the hero he was. The sound of hammering could be heard outside as the emissary hammered the poster into the townpost.

The evening continued into the night,hours passing, and drunken patrons with full bellies who danced and laughed soon began to leave the inn. After the last patron left the establishment, Alexander waved goodbye to the bartender and the other workers, getting ready to defend the town. It was dark, but with the flicks of his finger, he sent small fires that danced throught air and crawled into extinguished sticks that carried fire to illuminate the town slightly. Torches.

Alexander then heard a neigh.

He looked behind him. There it was, a horse, right by the inn. It must've been the emissary's horse. How come he still hasn't left with it, and how come nobody mentioned this? Were the leaving patrons too drunk to notice?

No matter, the emissary would leave with the horse soon. Only a matter of time.

Alexander left the horse, he took off his hat, roughing his short, thick, wavy hair up a bit before putting his hat back on. It was a sort of black cap.

He put his hands into his pockets, and began to patrol the streets. He'd walk past the townpost once he'd cross a corner, where he would see the face of the criminal he'd have to look out for, so he knew to take some time to look at the picture.

As he got closer and closer to the corner, a sort of iron smell lingered under his nose. Odd.

A few steps away from the corner, he saw what the origin of the smell was. Crimson stained the snow, and the smell became stronger and unmistakeable. The unforgettable stench of blood. He saw there, on the ground, a hammer, and some nails, and a slightly charred scarf. The emissary's, certainly.

"What the…?"

He rushed to the townpost, stepping onto the scarf, hands slamming against the post, looking for the poster.

There it was. Silas Wulfgar.

Betrayer.

The picture was expertly hand drawn, and highly disturbing.

It showed something in between man and beast. Leaning more on beast.

Teeth with no apparent purpose, white, cruel eyes, and a body so disfigured and gaunt, but obviously incomplete.

He knew that this appearance must be incomplete, for whatever dirty trick this Silas used to become a stronger beast had not yet passed fully. Alexander couldn't waste any time, he had to see if there was a trail of blood, something!

He began running past the townpost, in the direction he thought the beast ran.

And then he heard loud, distressed noises of a horse, way behind him.

He froze, he had to get back. Now.

He spun around as fast he could, running back to the inn, the cries and wails of the horse becoming worse and more pathetic by the second. Turning the corner, he saw it being dragged away, and he ran after it. The horse stopped producing sound before he could reach into that alley.

Blood was everywhere. In that darkness, he heard the ripping of flesh and tendons.

He had no shadow of doubt. This was the criminal. The beast.

He bothered not to look into the alleyway, he simply reached both hands out, and let hell loose.

Fire engulfed everything in that alley. Things shrieked and struggled and screamed, the screams soon turned hoarse as the voicebox of whatever it was in there burnt up. When Alexander stopped, only bones remained. He examinated them, of course. To the right laid the bones of the horse, and to the left, the bones of a large wolf. Looks like this Silas guy had undergone that transformation fully, indifferent from a strangely large wolf.

"Gonna need to take these bones out of here, I cannot leave these here."

But as he bent down to collect these bones, he would feel a hand land on his back. It felt normal, human, warm, gentle. For some reason, Alexander felt… Comfortable. He didn't feel like turning around to face the person resting their hand on his back. He didn't even jump at the sudden appearance of a hand on his back. A voice came behind him, the owner of that hand. It sounded gentle, soft-spoken, kind.

"Is this that Silas fellow I saw on the poster?"

"Yes, indeed it is. Worry not, he has been neutralized!"

"Hmmm, aren't those just wolven bones?"

The person now came down, sitting on their knees, looking at the bones as well. They wore long coats, and were dressed rather fancily. Long, black, wavy hair flowed from their head, and their skin was fair, pale, beautiful. Their face was something difficult to describe, it bore features you wouldn't typically see on one face, and yet here they were, balanced on a pale, sharp face, coming together nicely.

"Don't mind the calmness you feel, that would be a byproduct of my core, you know what that is, right?"

Alexander found himself able to turn his head again, but stared in wonder at the face beside him. He snapped out of it though.

"Yes… Yes I do know what a core is.. I… Have one…"

"Ahh, splendid. Now, look at the bones. Are you sure there isn't place for doubt?"

The person got up, removing their hand from Alexander's back.

"Yes… I suppose so… So this Silas person may still be around?"

"Indeed. That's why you should always look out for imposters. Things or people that aren't what they seem at first glance…"

Alexander nodded at this small wisdom. Finally getting up, and prioritising locating the target over getting rid of these bones.

Alexander then walked past the stranger, and the stranger followed after Alexander, and threw an arm over his shoulder, getting far too close in for comfort.

The arm felt strange, it was shifting, hot, changing…

"What's your name, stranger?"

He felt he was avoiding the stranger's face for some strange reason? Surely, he didn't feel embarassment from being enamored…

The arm now felt heavier, sharper. Looking down, Alexander saw it had gotten larger, hairier, it had grown sharp talons for fingers.
The stranger's reply came out hoarse, heavy, gutteral and breathy, almost as though they couldn't close their mouth, as it was full of something. Their face got closer to Alexander's, but now…

"My name, is Silas.."

…only teeth brushed against his face.

END OF PROLOGUE 1

by SolSourSop

I awoke slowly in a strange room. I didn’t remember going to sleep. I didn’t remember being awake either. I was starting to realize that I couldn’t remember much of anything.

I rose to my feet. The room was clean and sterile. There was no emotion or joy in it except for a poster of a cat hanging on a tree branch. I know what cats are. That's good. Unfinished metal devices of unknown origin were strewn haphazardly across various tables. In the corner, there was a plastic trash can. I didn’t know why, but it called to me. Compared to the alien machines, it was relatively innocuous, but it seemed important somehow. A low groan came from the can.

Had I always been able to hear? Or see? Had it always been possible for me to stand up and move? It didn’t feel familiar.

I looked down at my body. I saw toast smeared in strawberry jam. I was a walking piece of sentient toast. Why did I know what toast was but not who I am? I concentrated. I had nothing but very dim memories of an amber field of grain. I understand the world but not myself.

I didn’t know where I came from or what I used to be. Did it matter? I didn't want to think about it. Perhaps there were more pertinent questions. For example, where was I now?

Cautiously, I inched towards the garbage bin. It was too high to see its contents, so I simply knocked it over. Crumpled blueprints, scrap metal, and medical waste poured out. I sincerely hoped the suspicious, green puddle I was stepping in wouldn't give me some new, horrible plague. At the top of the pile was another piece of toast. At a glance, he looked much like me, but his body was burnt and had no jam. He didn’t seem to be conscious yet. He was just groaning in pain.

Immediately, I felt protective of him. We probably came from the same place. That meant we were almost like siblings. “Hey.” I nudged him. “Wake up.”

“Huh?” He opened his eyes. “Who are you?” He considered his question. “Who am I?”

“I was hoping you’d know. I just woke up here.”

“Me too. Weird.” He blinked. “That’s horrifying. Why do I even exist? What’s the purpose of my life?”

He was not taking this well. “I know it’s strange, but I think we can-”

“Why?!” He was pacing in anxious circles now.

I heard footsteps outside the room. “Shh! I think someone’s outside!” I whispered to him. He didn’t seem interested.

“I hear voices from inside the testing chamber,” said the thing. “Our friend must finally be up.” A curious figure stepped through the open doorway. It was a nearly hairless animal standing on its hind legs. I realized it was called a Velociraptor. It was a hulking creature that stood at nearly twice my height. Bright red feathers flared along its body like an all-consuming blaze. Another beast walked up beside it. I could only assume it was another Velociraptor though it was hard to tell. It was completely featherless, giving it a grotesque, alien appearance. Thankfully, part of its body was made of metal, which meant not all of it was raw-chicken-looking. Wires protruded from various iron joints that creaked and clanked as it walked. Its arm was entirely robotic. The fleshy parts of its body moved with a sort of unnatural rhythm. It looked straight at us with cold, calculating eyes.

“Stay back!” I cried, stepping in front of my fellow slice.

“Calm down,” said the non-robotic raptor. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

“Really? Because there's a horrifying cyborg-monster-amalgamation-thing standing behind you, and it doesn’t exactly look friendly.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge,” he explained, as if this were all perfectly normal. “That’s my lab assistant. He provides me with a little bit of extra muscle when I need to move equipment around. That’s all.”

“Lab assistant? Are you some sort of scientist?”

“I’m the best sort of scientist. I call myself Dr. Oort Percival, but you can call me Dr. Oort Percival. This whole laboratory belongs to me. There were some humans here when I found it, but they’re gone now. A word of advice: Don’t eat humans. They are barely palatable.”

“If you’re a scientist, does that mean you’re the one that created us?”

“Yes, indeed. You are the pinnacle of all my advancements. I have created sentient life. If you think about it, I’m basically a god now.”

He made us. That means… NOPE. NOT GOING DOWN THAT RABBIT HOLE. Ask about something different. “Do I have a name? I think I’d like to be called Jelly.”

"Sure. Toast with an identity sounds interesting."

It wasn’t a perfect name. I was clearly covered in jam, not jelly. On the other hand, Jam is a ridiculous title. The other slice of toast was starting to calm down a bit. Having seen that Percival was clearly harmless, he became a little excited. “What if I were called… Asher?”

“I like it,” I told him.

Percival pointedly ignored him. “Your names aren’t too important at the moment. You know, when I arrived in this time period, I had all these grand ambitions of world domination. I wanted absolute power. But then I found a slice of toast. It was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. Much better than a human.”

I didn’t like where this was going. I took a step back, but he only inched closer.

“But I knew it could be improved. Day and night I labored, trying to create a perfect piece of toast. Finally, I accomplished my goal, but something wasn’t quite right. Yes, it tasted good, but I didn’t feel like I earned it. Where was that jolt of excitement you got from Protoceratops meat?” He leaned in close, centimeters away from us. “I soon realized what I was missing. Do you want to guess?”

“Seasoning?” I tried.

“The thrill of the hunt. I’ll give you a sixty-second head start.”

“What?!” I cried. “What happened to ‘We’re not going to hurt you?!’”

“What can I say? I like playing with my food. All I really did was make noises with my mouth. If you chose to interpret them as words, that’s on you. Thirty seconds left.”

“That was not half a minute!”

“Twenty seconds.”

There was no reasoning with him. I started to run away, only to see that Asher was completely paralyzed. I went to grab him before escaping. We raced across the hallway. All the rooms had their doors open. Maybe one of them contained something helpful we could use. There was an aquarium, a terrarium, a snack bar, a reactor core, a computer lab, and what looked like some kind of shrine dedicated to what seemed to be toast gods.

We kept running, hoping to see something that could be used to our advantage. Instead, we saw the cyborg, hot on our heels. It followed us with a steady, unflinching determination. We were faster than it but just barely. Vicious jaws snapped behind us. We’d get tired sooner or later. Then it would catch us. Then we would die. Like most people, I considered death to be a bad thing.

That was when I saw it. One of the rooms had a giant safe. Whatever was in there was clearly something Percival didn’t want anyone to have. If it was that important, then it must have been something really destructive. “In here!” I told Asher. We made a sharp turn into the room. The cyborg couldn’t slow down fast enough and ended up stumbling just long enough to buy us some time. “Help me shut the door!” Asher and I pushed against
the door and managed to close it just at the last second.

Asher relaxed his muscles. “I think we’re safe,” he said.

The handle began to rattle. We both took a step back. Footsteps came from outside. Percival had caught up. The handle rattled some more.

Then some more.

And some more.

“You’re playing dirty, you know that?” Percival asked, rather calmly. “Taking advantage of my inability to open doors? That’s not going to work. The hunt is still on.” We heard the sounds of him and his robot walking away.

“That was close,” I said.

“I know, right?” Asher answered.

It didn’t look like Percival would be coming back soon. “So… how are you feeling? I mean, that was probably the most intense experience of our lives. Granted, that’s not saying much.”

He gazed off into the distance. “I feel afraid. It’s pretty horrifying to realize you owe your existence to the whims of a malevolent-”

“Let's talk about something different.”

“But this is the most important-”

"Please."

Asher saw the look in my eyes. I knew he wanted to say something more, but he respected my wishes. "Okay. What do you think we should do about the raptors?"

“The safe in this room probably has something important like a laser gun. We can then use it to fight the raptors.”

Asher made a face that clearly showed that he didn’t love my plan. “How would we get into the safe? What if there’s something useless in there, like money?”

What a ridiculous statement. Of course I had thought of that. “I did not think of that,” I said. Stupid conscience. Making me tell the truth. “But it’s okay. We have plenty of time.”

Just then, a loud banging sound came from the door. The raptors were trying to use brute force.

“This is fine,” I told him, “That door is probably very sturdy. It might be made of hardwood. I think that’s a thing. We just need to think of a fool-proof plan.”

Asher looked at the door. Then at the safe. Then at the door. Then at me. “I have an idea, but you’ll have to trust me.”

“What is it?”

“We open the door.”

Admittedly, that sounded like a very stupid idea, but I didn’t say that. “That sounds like a very… not-smart idea.”

“Please. Just trust me.”

I had only just met him, but if you think about it, I had only just met myself. At that moment, I chose to trust him. “Okay, but how do we reach the
doorknob? It was made for some kind of animal called a human. We’re too small for it.”

“Climb up onto my shoulders.”

I did as he asked. Atop his shoulders, the entire room was visible before me. I felt powerful. “We are now Ultimate Toast!”

“Excuse me. What?”

“This is our ultimate form, Ultimate Toast.”

“You’re just standing on my shoulders.”

“Yes.”

“Sure…” Asher didn’t understand my brilliance.

We walked up to the door. The banging was intensifying. “On three,”

“One… two…”

This was it. The moment that would not only define the rest of our lives but determine if we would be able to live them out.

“Three!” I swung the door open as hard as I could. The cyborg, now with a miniature battering ram attached to its body, burst in. Expecting to hit the door again, it was unable to stop its momentum. It slammed into the safe and created a hole just big enough for us to fit through.

Percival walked in. I had been hoping that the prospect of breaking his safe would terrify him. Rather, he was more annoyed than anything. Although he didn’t seem quite as smug as before, which I considered a plus. “Don’t let them get the device,” he commanded.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I leapt off of Asher. The cyborg tried to stop me, but it was too slow. I slid into the safe without a second to spare. Inside, I found a portable metal machine with a small interface on the side. I picked it up. The warm glow shone on my face. The creature stuck its arm in and tried to claw at me, forcing me against the wall.

I couldn’t see outside. Maybe Asher was about to do something heroic and get me out of here? I waited for a few seconds. Nope. Yelling incoherently, I charged at the cyborg’s arm and smashed it with the machine. I wasn’t sure what it did, exactly, but it certainly made a good bludgeon.

The beast retracted its arm as it screeched out in agony. There was my opportunity. In that brief moment, I jumped out of the safe. The raptors were ignoring Asher. He reached his hand out towards Percival.¹ Maybe Asher had another idea? Then he thought better of it. His gaze kept darting across the room. No one was touching him, yet there was panic in his eyes. All he did was fidget nervously.

“Are you okay?” I asked, landing beside him.

“I just don't know how to– what to– I’m not sure I can–” He took a deep breath. “Yes, I’m fine.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. I hated to see him so agitated. We would need to discuss this later. The cyborg raptor’s pain was quickly subsiding. The device had a screen with a complicated layout. “Asher, I’m going to point this thing at them, mash random buttons, and hope it’s some kind of death beam.”

This seemed to knock him out of his stupor. “What?! No, are you crazy? We don’t know what that thing will do!” He tried to take it from my hands.

The cyborg was quickly approaching. “Well, we can’t do nothing!”

“Yes, we can! We can absolutely do nothing while we think of a better solution!”

Percival was still watching us with his analytical eyes. He made no effort to stop what we were doing. Instead, he tensed his muscles, watching his cyborg with a strange sense of urgency. “That thing is dangerous,” he warned. “You’d better set it down before you hurt yourselves.”

If Percival didn’t want us to use it, that was enough of a reason for me. I began to button mash. The interfaces were complex and unintuitive. A red x was for confirmation and a green checkmark to cancel. Who makes something like that? Finally, the machine made a sound best described as a bloop. An automated voice came from within the device.

Invalid input. Default coordinates selected. Would you like to activate temporal device?

Asher was still trying to pull it out of my hands. The cyborg was close enough that if it needed oxygen, I would have felt its breath on my face.
I smashed the x.

Percival grinned as if he had just been pleasantly surprised.

I’m not entirely certain what happened next. I was sent hurtling through a weird… I don’t even know what to call it. It wasn’t outdoors, but you couldn’t honestly say it was a building. Among other things, there were a lot of bookshelves, some kind of giant centipede, a glowing fish that was just casually floating in the air, and a tome titled How to Make Friends and Eat Them Too: A Guide for Dragons. I was given only a few seconds to take this all in. I soon felt a tug that ripped me out of that strange universe.

Now we were in some kind of desert. Asher stood next me, observing the golden sands that surrounded us. Wind howled as it passed through endless dunes. “I think we’re dead,” he told me.

I looked at the device. The screen said Travel completed. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure that this whatchamacallit has teleported us to some kind of desert world.”

“Well, that’s just great,” Asher said with surprising tranquility, “We’ll have a bit of time before we die of thirst instead.”

“How sure are you that we need water to survive?”

Asher opened his mouth to say something. Then he thought for a moment. “I guess you’re right. This is a definite improvement over being chased by bloodthirsty dinosaurs. I should have trusted you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m going to start thinking of a way out of this place.” He got down on his knees and began drawing squares in the sand and connecting them with
arrows. He stroked his chin thoughtfully.

I took another look at my surroundings, trying to see if there was anything useful. “Um, Asher.”

“Yeah?”

“I still think this is an improvement over our prior situation. However, it would seem your previous claim that we are no longer being chased by
bloodthirsty dinosaurs is growing increasingly difficult to prove.”

“What do you mean by that?”

I pointed at the T. rex standing behind us.²

He turned around to look at it. “Hold on. We don’t know it’s bloodthirsty. Maybe it’s intelligent, like Percival, but not as hungry. Hey, Mr. Tyrannosaur, are you trying to eat us?”

I fully expected it to give some kind of articulate response. It just stared at us. “I don’t think it wants to hurt us, but I’m also pretty sure it’s just an animal.

“Cool. What do you think it wants?”

The T. rex defied expectations once more by clearing its throat and beginning to sing. It was a really bad singer. “Ah! My ears!” I tried to cover my hearing holes only to find that I wasn’t entirely sure which organ, if any, allowed me to hear.

The T. rex was not dissuaded. It kept on singing horribly out of tune. Any chance that it may have been sapient was quickly erased when it began to add meaningless lyrics about some vague experience it may or may not have had. I will spare you, dear reader, of having to learn the entirety of the words to the song. Just imagine someone talking about how they might have been sad at some point in the past and could possibly be feeling happy at some time in the present or near or distant future. It also reminded me of disco for reasons I don’t fully understand.

I was still trying to figure out how to cover my ears. “Someone, please make this stop!” Asher called out.

I attempted kicking the creature. When that didn’t work, I tried throwing sand in its eyes, only to find that I was too small to toss anything very far. “It won’t give up!”

“I was wrong! We did die! This is hell!” Asher screamed. “THIS IS HELL!”

Each note was increasingly shrill. The melody became more and more bizarre, yet it stayed far enough away from random noise that it was impossible to tune out. We should have tried to run away from it, but the sounds that it was producing made rational thought impossible. The best we could do was scream in the hopes of drowning it out.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

It seemed that our fate would be to spend eternity listening to what a T. rex believed was the hit of the century. That was, until the T. rex blew up.

The monster did not stop, but it did falter. In the distance, our savior was racing to attack the behemoth. She was an old Velociraptor with short, lackluster feathers. She wore earmuffs on her head and a grenade launcher in her hands.

Bang!

Bang!

The T. rex gave up on its song and attacked the newcomer directly. She wove her way around it with masterful precision. The grenades, being raptor-sized, weren’t doing a ton of damage, but they were enraging the T. rex quite well. Finally, it reared down and tried to snap at the raptor with its jaws. I took the opportunity to jump in and poke it in the eyes.

The T. rex made agonized honking noises. It took another look at us and decided we weren’t worth it. It turned around to return to whatever horrible pit of demons it crawled out of.

“Are you okay?” the raptor asked us.

Asher was the first to say what we were both thinking. “Wait. Just to be certain, you didn’t save us just now for the sake of slowly and painfully devouring us later.”

“I take it you’ve met Oort,”

“Yeah, do you know him?”

“I’d say he’s an old friend, but I never really liked him to begin with. I’ll tell you all about him if you let me see that doohickey you’re holding.”

Asher was unsure about what to do, so I was the one that had to step in. “Tell us why we should trust you. Then we’ll talk.”

She sighed. “Fine. Follow me.” She walked off to some faraway location.

Asher whispered to me, “Are you sure we should follow her? It might be a trap,”

I gestured at the endless expanse all around us.

“Fair enough.”

Onwards we marched in the vast wasteland. I couldn’t tell you how the raptor was able to navigate the series of seemingly identical sand dunes. Maybe she had some kind gizmo that helped her figure out where she was. Maybe she sold her soul in exchange for desert crossing powers. I don’t know. Regardless, we made it out and into a floodplain within only a few short hours. I seriously don’t want to know where we would have ended up had we just picked a random direction and started wandering.

Compared to the desert, the floodplain was vibrant and full of life. Green plants were everywhere. Dragonflies buzzed past what appeared to be a giant mutant duck with muscly arms.³ The flowers contributed to a musky aroma.

We eventually arrived at a gathering of Velociraptors. I wanted to call it a village, but they didn’t really have any permanent structures to sleep in. Instead, there were various piles of different kinds of technology that each raptor tinkered with almost obsessively. For the most part, they were all too absorbed by their machinations to notice us, but if we got too close to their stuff, they’d start hissing.

The raptor that had been guiding us eventually arrived at what appeared to be her own pile of things. Without saying a word, she spent about ten minutes sifting through a mound of clutter. Then she pulled out a projector and held it above her head triumphantly. She set it down in front of a whiteboard and began displaying a series of images. I groaned. She wanted us to sit through a slideshow presentation.

“My name is Monkeychunks,” she began.

I raised my hand. “Is that your real name?”

“Yes, my parents were jerks. Thank you for bringing that up. Moving on.” She went to the next slide: a picture of a giant rock hurtling through the void. “Six months ago, my telescopes detected a large asteroid headed straight towards Earth. There is no way to destroy or redirect it. In five years, it will hit us and wipe out nearly all life on the planet.” The next slide showed a cartoon Earth with a smiley face on it.

“This is horrific,” I whispered to Asher. He didn’t notice me. He had tuned out of the presentation and was drawing a diagram in the dirt.

“Yes,” he said to himself. “This’ll work.”

Monkeychunks looked at me sharply. “Ahem. With this knowledge, I called upon a council of my fellow Velociraptors. Together, we decided that the most intelligent among us were to work together to design the most complex contraption ever conceived of. A machine to change our fate.” The next slide had a photo of the device I held in my very hands. “A time machine to be specific.”

“What?!" I half asked, half exclaimed. "That’s so dangerous! What about paradoxes?!”

“Although it is theoretically possible to create a paradox, we have found that nature naturally tries to right itself.” She switched to a picture of a purple
crystal shard. “Unfortunately, it turns out that time travel is only possible through the use of a rare hypothetical substance known as aether. If it did exist, it would be capable of rapidly breaking down nearby organic life. As such, we were unable to actually build the machine ourselves. Instead, we made blueprints and buried them to be found by future civilizations. By default, the time machine sends the user back to the present. Well, the present from our perspective. Judging by your scent, I’m guessing this is about 66 million years in the past for you.”

“How can you tell just by smelling me?”

She sighed. She was growing tired of my questions. “Listen, we don’t have time to explain every little piece of exposition. Either way, the plan worked
shockingly well.” The next slide had a photo of an old, featherless raptor lying unconscious with the time machine in its grip. “A raptor from the future came to us with the time machine. We don’t know where he came from or how he got it, and we may never find out considering that something knocked him unconscious right before he went back to our time. Nonetheless, we did finally have a time machine. That was, until this jerk showed up.” She showed a picture of Oort Percival in a devil costume, drinking the tears of children.

“Him! He’s the worst!” I told her.

“Indeed, he is. From the beginning, Oort was unnecessarily cruel and had something of a god complex. After he suggested for the fifteenth time that we use the time machine to overthrow all sentient species that may evolve and then kill them repeatedly, we decided to exile him. He left, swearing that he would one day wreak ‘horrible, bloody vengeance’ upon us all. Not having anything better to do, he spent his time spying on us in secret. When someone came back with the time machine, he wasted no time stealing both the machine and the person that brought it to us. This all happened about two hours ago. Just now, I saw a flash of light and thought it may have come from another time machine. It did.”

“This is a lot of information. I’m not sure I understand it all. Who was the raptor that actually brought back the time machine?”

“We don’t know for certain, but facial analysis suggests that it may actually be Oort from the future.”

I shuddered. If what she said was true, he had unwittingly turned himself into an unthinking robot.

“Now it’s your turn," she informed me. "You need to give a presentation explaining everything that has happened to you up until the point we met.”

“What?! But I’m not prepared!”

“Tough luck. We don’t have a lot of time. Also, I will be judging your presentation harshly.”

“No! Noooooooooooooo!”

The presentation was fine.

Asher didn’t help. He was busy staring at the duck dino.

“Interesting,” Monkeychunks said. “So he thinks that sentient prey tastes better. What a dillweed."

“You're telling me. What can we do to stop him?”

Monkeychunks’ face lit up. “I’m so glad you asked. Since we seem to have similar goals, considering your need to not get eaten and our desire to avoid bloody vengeance, I think we should work together. My idea is that we use the life-decaying properties of aether to fight back against Oort.”

Asher had finished doing– whatever it was he was doing. He looked very proud of himself and had decided to rejoin the conversation. “We have a time machine. That seems like a much more effective weapon. Also, I’m still confused about the smell thing.” Okay. Apparently he had been listening the whole time.

“Oort probably has his own time machine. All it takes to create a double is going back in time by a day or so. The only reason he hasn’t shown up here yet is because it's only accurate within a week. There’s no technological reason for that. It’s just that Kyle was in charge of programming the UI, and he did a really bad job.”

A raptor in the neighboring pile piped up. “Hey! The deadlines you gave me were impossible! It’s not my fault if the finished product has a few jagged edges!”

“All you needed to do was make it possible to enter a time and place. You added fifty million buttons and no one knows what they do.”

“They would if they read the manual.”

“But you didn’t write a manual, did you?”

“I can’t be expected to take care of every single detail.”

Monkeychunks threw a computer chip at him. His eyes went wide as he lunged to grab it. “That should keep him distracted for a while,” she remarked. “Anyway, as I was saying, we also can’t use anything else either since Oort has had the opportunity to collect every defense that has ever been made in history. An uncounterable weapon may have been created in some far-flung branch of the future, but we can’t know that for sure. The only reason aether works is because it isn’t of this world, and no one has had a chance to find a way to stop it.”

Asher considered this. “No. It would still just be easier to stop his parents from meeting or something, and you still haven’t told us why we wouldn’t die from the aether.” I found it strange how Asher had suddenly decided he had big opinions on this when he’d been off in his own world earlier. What was going on inside his mind?

“Stop poking holes and let me finish! The time machine can’t go back any farther than this. We wanted to minimize paradoxes. As for avoiding death by aether toxicity, I think it only affects biological life. You function almost like robots made from grain.”

Considering our past experiences, I didn’t like the comparison to robots, but that wasn’t the most alarming part of her statement. “What do you mean ‘I think’?”

“I didn’t make you, okay? I can only be about 75% certain about how you function. I’m still confident in that 75%. This’ll work. Probably.”

I thought this was absurd. “You can’t ask us to do this! You do it!”

“I did explain how you’re the only beings capable of handling aether, didn’t I? This is going to be fine. You use the time travel logs to find the coordinates of whoever originally built it, take their aether, stop Oort, and come back to save us raptors. It’s the only choice.”

“No, it isn’t!” Asher said.

“You got a better idea?” she asked.

Asher stood motionless for an uncomfortably long amount of time. Right before I could ask if he was okay, he said, “No, I do not.”

“I know this is scary, but we can do it. I can even explain how to work the time machine. We should have at least a day before Oort shows up. It basically involves doing the opposite of whatever is most intuitive.”

I don’t know if we would have accepted the plan then or continued protesting. A blinding flash of light came from the center of the raptor's makeshift home. In an instant, Percival materialized beside his iron companion. He made a strange sound somewhere between a squawk and a laugh. He turned his gaze directly to me. “You know, when I brought you to life, I thought you would run around a bit before I inevitably tore you apart and ate you. I didn’t realize you had this much fight. At first, I was worried you may cause some damage, but this is actually great. It’s the most excitement I’ve had in years.”

Monkeychunks grabbed the time machine out of my hands before I could react. She furiously typed in coordinates to what I hoped was the location of the time machine’s creator. Percival pulled out a grenade launcher.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you,” he told her. “You’re next on my murder list.”

He handed it to the cyborg. It blasted the machine out of Monkeychunks’ claws and into a nearby ditch. “So that’s where my spare grenade launcher went,” she said.

“I know what to do!” Asher exclaimed. “Monkeychunks, hold off the cyborg! Jelly, grab the time machine!”

We didn’t need to be told twice. Monkeychunks picked up her own grenade launcher and attacked. With every shot, their missiles met in midair. This resulted in giant explosions of increasing epic-ness. The other raptors took notice of what was going on. They panicked and ran away, carrying their precious inventions in giant bindles with robotic legs.

Asher reached into the river and pulled out a fish with his bare hands. Holding the fish in his mouth, he quickly climbed up a nearby tree. From there, he jumped onto the back of the giant duck-like dinosaur we had seen earlier. He held the fish in front of its head and steered the beast where he wanted it to go.

Meanwhile, I was trying to get to the ditch where the time machine had fallen. Since the cyborg was preoccupied with Monkeychunks, it was Percival’s job to chase after me. Except he didn’t really chase. He took his sweet time savoring every step. He wasn’t too concerned about me getting away.

Monkeychunks and the cyborg had given up on grenades. They were fighting hand to hand. Monkeychunks was doing okay, but the cyborg’s near-infinite endurance and ability to taste fear seemed to be giving it the upper hand. Then it transformed its robotic arm into a chainsaw. A literal chainsaw. This was going poorly.

Asher was not using his duck thing to fight the cyborg. Instead, he was ramming it into a tree repeatedly. The tree looked big and strong, but apparently, it was much flimsier than it seemed. It shook quite violently.

I had nearly made it to the gully where the time machine lay when I tripped on a root. I tried to keep going, but my foot was stuck. Percival was getting closer and closer. If this was how I died, I would be sorely disappointed. Stretching, I just barely managed to reach the machine. I knew I couldn’t leave without Asher. Once more, the time machine’s most important feature was being a blunt, metal object. I slammed it against the root until I was free. This had the side effect of severely injuring my leg.

Now, as I tried to limp back, Percival sped up. “I’m going to enjoy this.” He knocked me over with a kick and stepped on me. I couldn’t get up. He slowly raised his hook-shaped claw.

“Watch out!” Asher shouted.

With a crash, the tree came tumbling down directly onto us. Using my last burst of strength, I tumbled out of the way in the nick of time. Percival was trapped under an enormous pile of leaves and branches.

Monkeychunks was still holding off the cyborg. “Go!” she ordered, “I’ve already input the coordinates. I’ll be fine!”

Asher fed his dinosaur the fish and hopped off of it. “You heard her. Let’s go!”

My gaze turned to Percival. His limbs were pinned down as he struggled to escape. We had bested him for now. When he turned to meet my gaze, he became eerily still. He gave me a relaxed, knowing grin, but in his eyes, I saw a manic glimmer. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have just time traveled away, and that would be the end of it. Yet that same gut instinct that allowed me to make quick decisions told me to go over to him.

“You’re never going to stop us, you old, spiteful lizard,” I taunted.

This elicited another one of his strange laughs. “Oh, Jelly. Haven’t you heard?” He pulled out an arm that I thought had been stuck beneath the tree. “I’m more closely related to crocodiles.” He struck at the time machine, creating a nasty-looking dent.

Asher reached for me just as a blue tendril of lightning shot out from the machine and hit us both.

I had no idea what was about to happen.

by Tacolaser

i heard that, way down in
new orleans,
the ground opened up and
swallowed
the old house (not the one
you've heard of
or the one that you haven't
but a third one),
that the ground was you.
i heard that
you could not bear to come
out of the
shadow of that red rock
and stand
in the blistering sun.
i heard that
the pacific has no memory,
but it scars.

it was you who taught me
to take these
(my grandfather's memories
somehow
deposited in my mind)
and build
with them a wall to stand
against your
waves and the eroded sand
with them.
i saw these things from the start:
the revenge
of the c students, the stillborn
plans, the
foundations gone to dust.

by UncannyClown

The importance of today flashes into mind almost as soon as that. If events play out just right—and they will, he's certain of it—then today will be the next step of his career, the ever-so-important advancement anyone should strive for. As he looks at himself in the mirror near his bed, taking in that hazel hair, that dashing smile, and those electric-blue eyes, he can already see himself in an upper executive's office.

The first parts of his morning, the dressing and workout and so on, are almost automatic, inconsequential while his mind is focused on the important parts of the day instead. And first among those is expanding his advantages over regular people. For that, he has his technician Octavia. The trip to her office is short and uneventful, but necessary. He's considered having her come to him, but decided he'd rather not have this sort of work in his home.

So, as he does every few months, he walks into what's halfway between a clinic, a dentist's office, and a machine shop. Augment technicians all have some things in common, and where they work always ends up looking similar as a result. Music is playing as he steps through the door. Schedule Breaker. A good album, one he enjoys. Taste in music was one of the reasons he picked her.

"Good morning, Mr. DeLucia!"

Octavia's voice rings from out of sight, the next room over. As cheery as ever, if a tiny bit raspy today. Perhaps she's been working for some hours now; he truly appreciates her work ethic.

"Good morning, Octavia," he replies.

She comes around the corner, carrying tools in hand. She beckons, as she always does, for him to follow. Humming along to the song, Horacio makes his way to the patient's chair.

"Do you have any complaints? Have your eyes had any problems?" she asks, already raising a diagnostic tool to his left eye.

"None. They've been working well. The gazeplotter is perfect."

Octavia almost beams at that, her own ocular augments still fixed on his. It makes sense, of course; the gazeplotter, a tiny addon to his vision that points out where other people are looking without him needing to focus on their eyes, was her idea. By magnifying microscopic eye movements born from uncertainty or deliberation, it's already given him an edge in more than one negotiation, a preternatural ability to sense moments of weakness.

"I'm glad to hear that!" She's already scanning his other eye for miscalibrations. "I have something else you might like: an emotional highlighter. It calculates what whoever you look at is really feeling from their body language, much faster than a normal person can, from much smaller cues."

An advantage like that? Horacio's answer is simple, accompanied by a smirk. "Do it."

She raises a cord with a needle-thin connector obligingly. He looks to the right, letting her access the tiny port in the side of his left eye. The data inload drags on for uncomfortable seconds, until a success icon flashes across his vision and she disconnects it. Doing the mirror action for his right eye is much the same, but this time he doesn't quite hide a small shudder as the needle approaches his vision.

"Is something wrong?" Octavia asks.

He would shake his head if he could do so with the cord sticking out of the side of his eye, but right now he can't even blink. Actually, no, he can probably do both, but the habits of protecting organic eyes die hard even after they've been replaced by superior hardware.

"It's nothing."

"Are you sure? If direct connection is uncomfortable, we can set up something remote instead. It'll be secure, so I can—"

"No," he snaps. "Absolutely not. I've told you this before, I don't want anyone spying on me because they managed to hack into my eyes."

"That's not…" she starts, trailing off quietly. The gazeplotter draws a line from her eyes to her tools as she looks away. For a moment she hesitates, perhaps trying to think of another way to sell him on it. "Of course, sir."

"Good. Don't bring it up again. Now how long is this going to take?"

She glances back up, eyes wavering in the characteristic way of someone reading off projected information in their augments. "Just a moment longer, sir. It's a big package."

Then, finally, she retracts the needle from his eye again. He takes the opportunity to blink repeatedly, another holdover instinct of flesh. On the fifth, a new program loads into his vision, automatically highlighting Octavia and listing small text under her face.

77% Confident, 18% Anxious, 5% Relieved.

"Oh, good, it works."

She smiles. 60% Confident, 36% Relieved, 4% Anxious. "I'm glad! You can turn it on and off just like anything else, so don't worry if it's a little distracting at first."

Sure enough, the option is right there. A confirmatory blink and the highlight disappears as quickly as it came.

"Is that all, then?" Horacio asks.

Octavia nods. "They're in perfect shape. You've been taking good care of them."

"Good." He rises from the chair, brushing off his suit. "I'll see you in six weeks."

The appointment ends as quickly as it began, with a little negotiation on the date of the next. Before long, Horacio is back out the door, leaving Octavia's smile behind on his way to work. He's fond of her.

When he arrives at work, the truly important part of the day is imminent. It begins with a little prep in his own office, coordinating others and reviewing data, all to rehearse. Before long, however, he's sitting at the side of a long table, waiting for others to file in. Waiting for now.

Giles Bourne comes in first, ever the most punctual among the major players. Five years Horacio's senior, already head of the Expansion Department. Outwardly unmarred, but always listening with ears far sharper than he had at birth. A powerful ally. He and Horacio nod at each other in acknowledgement.

Samia Chamas is next, entering with three others. As the head of Finance, she has far more control than her laid-back demeanor and unkempt bun would suggest, and she knows it. Giles may already be on Horacio's side, but Samia is who he needs to sway or defeat today.

More trickle in, their positions or stances irrelevant to Horacio's ambitions, even those who sit and work directly alongside him. Some talk quietly to each other, distracting themselves with side conversations, but Horacio's gazeplotter confirms that the major players remain focused only on each other or their notes as they wait.

The murmuring dies away the moment Valentina Rios Branco walks in. She would have that effect even if she wasn't in charge. Something about her intimidates most people. Horacio picked the color of his eyes to unnerve, giving another slight edge in negotiation, but she doesn't need augments for that, managing it with entirely mundane steel-gray eyes and a well-cut suit. Everyone in the room instinctively knows to pay attention to her.

"You all know why we're here. Let's begin," she says the moment she sits down. Curt, matter-of-fact. This is a woman in full control of herself and everyone around her, an apex to strive towards. "Mr. Bourne, your report."

Giles clears his throat, adjusting the collar of his shirt as he leans forward. It's a tic Horacio knows well, a gesture in anticipation of attention rather than actual nervousness. He silently blinks until the emotional highlighter activates, letting him compare it to something he's already confident of.

51% Composed (Artificial). 22% Ambitious. 15% Contemplative/Recall. 12% Anxious.

As Horacio expected, then. Giles begins to speak.

"As most of you have heard already, there was a disaster over the Jovian moon Callisto this week. Another large colony ship attacked and disabled. Reports of heavy loss of life. Our condolences to the deceased, but…"

"An opportunity," Horacio finishes the sentence for him. They hadn't actually practiced a speech together in the slightest, but overlapping aims lead to similar lines.

"Indeed," Giles continues, only briefly looking his way. "There will be more uncertainty and reluctance for a while, but the demand for colonization will continue anyway. I doubt the original actors will want to try again so soon."

"And can you back up that doubt with numbers, Mr. Bourne?" Valentina asks. 70% Assured. 20% Patient. 10% Inquisitive.

"Yes, uh, well, Acquisitions is somewhat better suited to internal reconnaissance on the attitudes of other groups." Despite the hesitance of his words, Giles' eyes remain focused. "But we've been able to confirm the demand. Pricing is only down a few percent, with more details in my report."

"If it's only down a few percent," Samia cuts in, "then that's still expensive to capitalize on. If you can't actually confirm that it's ripe for the taking, all you're going to do is cost us."

Horacio raises an eyebrow. Samia coming out swinging is more aggressive than he'd expected, discarding the relaxed attitude almost immediately. Does she have a stake against this that he didn't know about? Could that tip the scales? Neither his acumen nor the emotional highlighter can tell right away.

"Peace, Mrs. Chamas." Valentina waves her off. "We're all aware of the general stakes here. Mr. DeLucia, can you confirm Mr. Bourne's doubt?"

"Of course," Horacio smiles. "We have been investigating attitudes. Several of the partners involved have had their trust shaken in the Orders after a blunder like that, and they're looking for reassurance. Even if they're willing to try again right away, they'll be receptive to us stepping in instead. A fresh partner without recent failures."

Samia rolls her eyes. "Your reassurance is that we might be able to bribe some corporate defectors away from the Orders? That doesn't solve any of the problems here."

Giles opens his mouth to respond, but a single look from Valentina silences him, the gazeplotter's vector swinging around like an imaginary rapier. "Orders aside, Mrs. Chamas brings up an important point as well. Do you already have a plan to avoid the same problems?"

64% Patient. 25% Calculating. 11% Bored.

This part is all a test, and an easier one at that. The augment only highlights this. Horacio's smile grows.

"Mr. Harper, does Security have the resources to work with us?"

John Harper, head of the Security branch, sits up. Horacio has had no doubt in his stance or his responses, so he has been a non-variable, a constant. Anything that will expand Security's purview and budget, he'll sign onto.

"Of course," he rumbles. "Our Security arm is well equipped. An expansion to Callisto would, eh, significantly increase our Jovian presence and reach, so it pays for itself there."

Samia's hand twitches on the table. There's a pattern to it as she composes her thoughts, as if it's a mnemonic, or perhaps an actual input in an invisible system. Samia has an augment as well, one she doesn't advertise, but he's seen the flash of silver on her wrist and palm before. Her eyes, organic eyes, unfocus slightly until she speaks again.

"Large-scale security reduces the risk of disaster, but roughly doubles the cost. It's still safer to keep current investments."

Safer to keep current investments? The sentence is logical, but something about it seems off, even ulterior. She meets his scrutiny without wavering.

42% Calculating. 41% Defensive. 17% Anxious.

Ah. Ah-ha! The mere confirmation that she was hiding another motive is practically the same as telling him what it actually is. A slight rush of satisfaction goes through him at how the new upgrade has cut a back-and-forth of discovery down to one line. Were it not unbecoming, he would let his smile become a smirk.

As it is, he leans in, as if telling a joke. "The translunar markets are stable, Mrs. Chamas, but stagnant. We don't have to give up your investments there, but we have to keep growing. Make sure they're not an obstacle to our success."

On the other hand, he doesn't need an external program to tell him that Samia is resisting the urge to glare daggers at him. He even focuses on that, keeping his satisfaction aloft, because everything he just said was in fact a complete gamble. His composure never slips, but he can feel his heartbeat in his chest as the silence stretches into seconds.

"So, Acquisitions, Expansion, and Security are united in this?" Valentina asks. It's more of a declaration with a question mark at the end, honestly. Her eyes are boring into the side of his head.

"Yes," Horacio answers, taking the opportunity to look away from Samia without seeming to back down. John and Giles give quiet echoes of assent.

"Mrs. Chamas, neglect the risk. How much is the payoff if we succeed here?"

Samia twitches again. "Around 20% higher than present," she sighs.

Giles clears his throat again. "Not counting the long-term benefits of expanding, of course. Or what else we can in the process."

That's their case, one quietly prepared in advance. "Let's seize the opportunity and push out the competition ASAP," in plainer terms. Always a gamble, particularly with who the competition is, but one tailored to business. One he just needs Valentina to accept. If going in against such influential opponents is risky, she needs to see the benefits as too sweet to ignore. A serious advantage over the rising power of machine cultists is exactly that.

Once again, the silence stretches on. She has a habit of inflating the quiet, letting those present shift uncomfortably in their own thoughts, waiting to see if anyone cracks or tries to fill the silence even after she's made up her mind.

"Your decision, ma'am?" Horacio asks after the pause. It would seem like a calm, patient question to most people present, but for her discerning eyes he has to hope it betrays none of his nerve.

Valentina folds her hands on the table. "We'll do it," she answers. "Mr. DeLucia, you'll be paving the way. Harper and Bourne, you'll prepare our existing resources and anything DeLucia turns up. Mrs. Chamas, I want your backing on this, but do moderate it. I want a formal plan in two days."

That's it. The decree handed down. Permission to prove himself further, to seize the stars. Horacio tempers a sigh of relief down to mere breathing exercises as Valentina looks them all over one more time.

"Dismissed."

The hours of work that follow are a footnote, the inevitable execution of a success that has already happened. By the time Horacio walks out at the end of the day, the elation still hasn't worn off. Stopping on the sidewalk, he looks up into the sky. Jupiter is lost in the sea of blue enforced by the Sun every moment it remains above the horizon, but his eyes project and focus on that pin of light anyway. I see you. The first rung on his ladder to the stars.

It's as he stares upward that a message comes through, a familiar musical sting on his far more mundane aural transceiver. Nothing like the advantages his eyes or Giles' ears give, but it lets him take calls.

"Speaking," he subvocalizes, looking back down to the street.

"Hora!" exclaims an equally-familiar voice on the other end, "Te vejo a uma hora?"

Horacio almost laughs out loud, certainly chuckling enough for the other to hear it. Rafael Moura Ramos is the only soul in the world with the self-confidence to know how important today has been and tell him to spend the afternoon racing anyway.

The confidence, however, is not misplaced. Rafael has known him since they were teenagers, having gone through much of school and their early careers together. They no longer work at the very same place, but their bond remains all the same. And besides, after today, he's earned a little relaxation.

"Entendo," he replies. No other words need to be exchanged before he hangs up; they've known each other much too long for that. The destination is a local speedway, the time is an hour from now. More than enough time to prepare and have his speedbike driven there.

Horacio gets there a few minutes before Rafael does, enough time to inspect his speedbike and confirm that it works just as he wants it to. No need for time-consuming preparations on that count, at least not this time. As a result, he's already kitted out and waiting on his speedbike when Rafael pulls up on his own.

"You're late," Horacio declares. A blink confirms that Rafael is actually still a good ninety seconds ahead of an hour, but it's something one has said to the other many times, bordering on a joke between them.

"Ah, you know how it is," Rafael replies, scratching the side of his helmet. "I couldn't go as fast as I wanted to, yeah?"

Horacio laughs again, lowering his own visor. "Then I guess I'll win."

"In your dreams!"

With that, they both kick off, immediately vying to get ahead of the other. They've done this kind of race more times than Horacio cares to count, ever since they were kids, even into their careers, so this in particular can be more of a greeting than anything else. If pressed, he would probably consider racing his one vice.

But what a good vice it is! Churning and burning, pouring through turns with reckless abandon, feeling the acceleration, the bike growling and roaring beneath him, the wind blasting him. It brings freedom and exhilaration. If he gets that in his job from risks like contending with rivals and Orders, he gets it in his life from this.

He can hear Rafael laugh like a madman as he advances, gaining a lead through wild positioning and beginning to pull ahead. He always has been better at corners than Horacio, but it's only a temporary advantage; there's a straight section coming up. The moment that it does, Horacio takes his chance and twists the accelerator.

One-ninety. The air swirls around him.

Two-twenty. He's catching back up.

Two-fifty. He leans into the turn, cornering in the same way as Rafael without wasting distance.

Two-eighty. He peels past Rafael. He's nearing the fastest he's ever comfortably gone, but not the fastest the bike can ever go. An urge whispers to him, to press it further, to prove what he's really capable of. He'll see any disaster coming in time to brake, so why not? This isn't actually much more dangerous than business.

Two-ninety. He can no longer tell whether the bike or the wind is screaming louder. His own adrenanline-fueled laughter is snatched away in the roar of noise.

Three hundred. The track is moving so fast now, but he can keep up. His heartbeat gives percussion for what is going to be his most dramatic race win against Rafael. All he needs to do is keep his eyes on the roadway, and get through a few more corners.

Three-oh-five. This time he almost throws himself into the turn, trusting centrifugal inertia to keep him steady. All he needs to do is—

Horacio's vision goes black. It's instant, as simple as a one changing to a zero. And it could not be more poorly timed. He jerks back, careful control of the bike disintegrating without input to guide it. One hand jerks on the brake, and he tries to pull out of the turn, but misjudges it based on feel alone.

What the—Octavia?!?!

What happens next takes perhaps a second, but it feels like an eternity. The bike wobbles and pitches, tipping and bucking with the knee-jerk responses and loss of control. He feels himself lift off the seat and tumble through the air, momentum ripping his hands from the handlebars. He is weightless for nauseating moments, lost in a void of sound with neither sight nor feel to guide him. He feels nothing.

When Horacio hits the wall an instant later, he feels it, very very much. The one mercy is that he doesn't feel it for long. Slamming into an obstacle at nearly three hundred kilometers per hour, with only a helmet and protective suit? He's dying of a dozen breakages before Rafael can even slow down, let alone turn around to reach him.

The last thing he sees is his vision returning, once again as simple as zero-one, now that he's stopped. Then it fades in a much more organic way as he loses consciousness. He never even hears Rafael's shouts, let alone when called medics come get him.

Investigation of the death of Horacio DeLucia reveals no defects in his augments, nor any features that he hadn't asked to have installed. The same goes for his speedbike; no sabotage can be identified, nor even a mechanical failure. As many possible motives as one can expect in the death of a rising star, but no proven means or witnesses besides his own, deeply shaken, best friend. As far as investigators can tell, the only blame lies in Horacio's own recklessness.

Of course, Horacio's technician is singled out as a possible suspect, either of murder or at least malpractice, second only to Rafael Moura Ramos, but the actual analysis of the augments is decisive. He was equipped with exactly what he asked to have equipped, and nothing that he asked to have equipped could have plausibly caused this accident. The most damning thing investigators can muster up is unused storage space in the computers of both eyes, which is exactly to be expected for a client who desired an ever-changing, ever-improving suite of software tools.

It is also, of course, exactly to be expected if certain programs were present and deleted themselves, but no amount of searching can find that. Not even a single trace of a digital footprint to base such an accusation on. It seems she really is blameless, unlucky only in coincidentally close timing.

So, only a week after being let go from the investigation into her client's death, Octavia lifts to orbit. A paranoiac might see that, too, as an admission of guilt, but scheduling some emergency time off after such an experience is quite reasonable for anyone.

One public trip brings her from Low Earth Orbit to geostationary. A second transfers to a layover at a distant station. A third brings her to the L4 Selene Station. In terms of public records, her trip ends there, in that vast void-city situated squarely in the point of equilibrium between the planet and satellite. It truly is a destination unto itself.

But, nestled among the countless vessels clustered along its docking terminals, she slips onto a private, if unremarkable, cargo-passenger multipurpose transport. Official records call it the Skybloom, but its passengers and crew know it by a much more fitting name: 永遠の警戒. Eien no Keikai. The Eternal Vigilance. For all the time she has spent away from it, it is the first place Octavia has learned to truly call home.

The docking corridor is a long, window-paneled hall on the skin of the ship, serving as both a scenic vestibule and a bulk airlock. Strolling along it, Octavia hums the melody of the song "Remote Working" to herself. Hm. It's not usually her taste in music, but Schedule Breaker as a whole has grown on her ever since she picked it up to ingratiate herself to her target. Perhaps that will be the detail from this job that she keeps for the future.

Halfway down, she pauses to look up. Save for the traffic soaring to and fro, the window panels offer an unobstructed view of the dappled marble that is Earth as the Sun rises across the face of Asia.

She's contemplating the view from Lagrange when the door at the far end of the hall hisses open, the tiny sound quite clear to her own enhanced ears. However, there's no need for enhancements to notice the ensuing rush of footsteps and a voice she knows quite well as it shouts, "Tavi!"

Octavia turns just in time to catch the voice's owner mid-jump. She has the experience now to steady herself against the momentum, but the sensation of arms wrapping around her is as affectionate as ever.

"Hello, Vee," she smiles. When the hug does end, she finally has a chance to look her assailant over.

Avery Arafa, Octavia's best friend within the Order and one of her first friends in the world. Almost instinctively, Octavia finds herself evaluating all the little ways in which she has changed since they last saw each other face-to-face more than nine months ago. Hair a different shade of brown, now cut short around the fresh, intentionally-inflamed scars of a memory implant at the back of her neck. Left iris a different texture—so she finally did get the zoom lens installed. A new freckle. Still that same beaming smile.

"How was it? Did you meet anyone interesting? See anything cool? Did you get to see much of Kinshasa before you left, or did you not have time to explore? Oh! Did you hear about what happened over Callisto?"

And, most definitely, the same curiosity, so boundless it's a wonder Avery doesn't burst from trying to contain it. Octavia could use thought-dictation and still not keep up with the verbal torrent of questions. As ever, she can only wade around it instead of matching.

"It was good practice, for infiltration and augments. I'm afraid the only half-interesting guy I met is dead. Kinshasa was just for the lift, sorry. And how could I not hear about that? Don't answer that."

The last bit is hurriedly tacked on, catching Avery a moment before she can spitball a dozen hypothetical ways to be out of the loop. The other woman deflates in disappointment, making an exaggerated pout before they both laugh.

"It's good to see you again," Octavia admits. The "not calling your friends and allies while on a job" part of opsec is basic discipline, and she's more used to the loneliness than most, but she really did miss Avery.

"We should totally catch up tonight!" Avery says. Her smile fades right after. "But the Overseer wants to talk to you first."

"Of course." That much Octavia had known without needing to be told, but she's not going to disappoint her friend with the obvious.

Avery hugs her again, then steps back. "Come and find me right after, okay?"

"Okay."

Octavia waves as they both withdraw, going deeper into the vessel and toward the Overseer's sanctum while Avery returns to her own workspace. The path winds through the labyrinthine halls until, very suddenly, she's right outside the door.

"Come in."

The virtual voice doesn't actually pass through her ears, entering her mind directly as if telepathic. Such is the silent speech of the truly augmented.

She enters to a digital spider's web, a sea of monitors and projections orbiting a central chair—nearly a minor throne in its significance, despite being quite plain—and, of course, its occupant.

Sitting before her is, perhaps, the most beautiful person Octavia has ever seen. The human form, already handsome, augmented to near perfection by delicately crafted and engraved rhodium hardware. An ideal union of flesh and steal. The kindest person Octavia has ever met, who took her form nothing to become what she is. Octavia is sure she would die for them. That is the shape of her loyalty to Verdan Zure, Overseer of the Order of Vigilant Steel.

"Octavia," Zure hums. Their real voice has the slightest mechanical whirr to it, adding a quality like a cat's purr rather than detracting from its smoothness. "You have done well."

Octavia bows deeply, letting herself smile. "Thank you, Overseer."

"You have done well," Zure repeats as she rises, "The rising star of a potential threat dead in an accident of his own making, with nobody to blame but himself, save possibly for the friend who goaded him into such a dangerous stunt. His work will be left incomplete and rudderless, breaking apart under bickering and politics without him forcing it along. And so, the potential threat to us will not become a real threat. Very nearly perfect."

There it is. At the tail end of a small speech of praises, the catch, the flaw. As much as she has run through this scenario in her head, as many assignments as she's done well at, Octavia can't help but long for the day when "very nearly" will become "perfect" without a catch, when she will finally exceed her mentor's expectations.

"How could I have made it perfect?" she asks.

"You tell me," Zure answers. This is an old call-and-response between them, a prod to self-reflect and analyze her own strengths and weaknesses, which they have been doing since her very first assignment. As a result, her first suggestion is preplanned, something considered the entire time since DeLucia's death.

"An additional delay before the sabotage program activated? That way it couldn't happen the same day as an appointment even if the conditions were met," she suggests. "But the investigators found no evidence."

Zure raises a single tapered finger. "It was simple and standalone, activating once and erasing all trace of itself afterward. If it was regularly checking the time, or being reset every time you had an appointment, there would be more to conceal, more chances to leave a trace. Success there comes in less evidence."

She's silent, contemplating.

"…But I had no control over when he would do certain activities. How could I?"

Zure's smile is at once reassurring and unnerving, proof that they knew what she would say. They always do. Their eyes, a soft shade of amber today, glitter like they're about to let her in on an amusing secret.

"You focus too much on the technological, Octavia. Admirable, but I don't need more proof of your devotion."

Octavia frowns, the slightest twitch of her lips practically screaming her confusion to one so observant. Her own emotional highlighter blinks on, checking if there's a detail her brain is missing.

90% Composed. 10% Amused.

None. Zure shows only what they want to show, and not a stray microexpression besides that. She truly cannot predict their suggestion beyond the broadest strokes.

"Overseer?"

"You must broaden your net. Learn to weave a web of influence over many people, not just the one. To be unseen but control every factor through effects on people who don't even realize you exist. With that, you could decide, or at least learn, exactly when a target will act, and plan accordingly."

They talk about a masterwork of manipulation as if it's effortless, something they could do in their sleep. Perhaps they can. But it's far beyond anyone else, and Octavia knows it.

"How long did it take you to become so skilled at it, Overseer?"

Zure laughs. "You don't need to flatter me, either, Octavia. Also, one hundred twenty-six years."

Given what she knows about their age, there's no telling if that's actually true. That particular number could be a lie, a lesson in embarrassment if she takes it uncritically. As ever, there are layers to discern even in the honest conversations.

But then Zure's expression softens, and their tone matches it. "I am proud of you. It's rare we get an opportunity to eliminate a potential rival while making it look completely accidental instead of merely shifting blame, and I'm glad I could trust you with finding and executing it."

She bows again, even deeper this time. No more words can convey her gratitude to them.

"Thank you, Octavia. We will speak again of this soon."

"Your will be done, Overseer."

"But it need not be done tonight. I believe Miss Arafa wanted to spend some time reuniting with you, yes? Don't let me detain you."

A release from conversation. She finally rises to take her leave, breathing once she's back out in the hall. The entire ship to explore once more, and an entire night with her best friend? It is good to be home.

by weiserthanyou

Second Welcoming

"They gave us translators to wear around our necks so we could understand the orders, and they worked amazingly well. But the language they made us speak was so incomprehensible that I couldn't imitate the accent. I understood everything they said to me, and they understood what I had to say, but I couldn't repeat what I had said myself. I had to trust that what I said was what I thought."

Letter recovered from a footlocker in a West Felimon outpost

At the turn of the 250th Revolution, the new Duke of Histan was sworn in, Histan's economy was booming, and the Confederacy of High Mages had reached an economic low.

The new Duke was much of a showboat; One of the first things he did as New Duke was hold a fifty-thousand-strong military parade, complete with an aeromagic showcase. He would often attend ceremonial events in gold and gylmium armor, boasting about how it was worn by Gigan Horast¹ during the Battle of Jorus Way in 137R; he'd be escorted out at one point after a fight broke out between him and the elder-son of a Berug veteran. Often would he hang a giant banner of Histan from the back of his autocarriage, two of them if he was going through Berug.² He'd also brag about his endless collection of Sprout War era weapons, including the only prototype of a steed-musket, the only attempt to give horses ranged weaponry; testing of the steed-musket ended after the 5th horse to be tested shot a mage for giving it knowledge on how to use a musket.

His ego shone through once he traveled to the Confederacy in 252R for a speech concerning the growing tension within the League of Yoren, most of which was perpetrated by him, after which he had been told about Transrealmology by President Hapless over some mead. It was the fact that Histan was the first to conceive it that convinced the New Duke to begin a revival of Transrealmology, despite being denied funding from the League, who was considering removing and court-martialing him for possibly bringing Earth-Humanity back to Yoren; this was ultimately voted against based on the New Duke being one of their largest donors.

The New Duke proposed to introduce Earth-Human militants into the Histan armed forces to bolster their dominance in the wars to come. It was a heavily argued-against plan among the League, but after Histan's top lawyers pleaded on the New Duke's behalf and another, unrelated donation³ went through, they wrote up extensive parchmentwork to regulate the use of Earth-Human combatants within the New Duke's army.

The New Duke's reasoning stemmed from seeing the machine-based weapons of the Earth-Human armies, as well as their affinity for war and eagerness to produce more war machines, and their ability to evolve these machines as fast as the wars themselves. "Their evolution was based on bringing fear to the nations they despised, alongside simply wanting to invent the next 'best weapon' out of fear that their adversaries would beat them to it; this was the reason they once held the power of their Sun within their bombs and unleashed it upon their enemies. Of course, this was before they came to their senses and finally waved this power off as a needless tragedy left twiddling its thumbs, waiting to make another mark on their Earth."⁴

One of the first examples the New Duke used was an Earth-Human conflict labeled by their historical texts as World War Two. Very little information is available on the cause of such a large conflict; however, the belligerents and their technologies are very well known.

On one side were the Axis Powers. This alliance consisted of the Earth-nations Germany, the Soviet Union, and Italy, who were most likely fighting together to claim the lands of the Earth-continent Europe. The industries of these Earth-nations varied differently; the Germans focused on quality, mostly producing heavily-armored war machines, contrasting the Soviet Union's preference for quantity, usually having less foreboding armor than their ally, in favor of sheer numbers. Italy's armored machines were built for speed and mobility, an advantage that would later dominate Germany when they joined the Allied Powers; however, they weren't able to produce as many machines as their allies, supposedly due to budget constraints and carrying capacity.

On the other side of the war were the aforementioned Allied Powers, which started as Earth-nations Britain and China, then later the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Britain would focus on a two-pronged war machine doctrine, sending light, fast vehicles to break up the front lines, followed by larger, heavier vehicles to clear the way for foot soldiers. China utilized a mix of many doctrines in a desperate bid to ward off Russian attacks, using vehicles purchased from Russia itself and producing as much armor as their industries allowed for, though they were eventually overwhelmed by the numbers of Russia's Red Army and surrendered in 1943. The United States of America designed most of its war machines to be sent in after an infantry breakthrough, as well as anti-tank ordinance, used heavily during its invasion of Germany.

Past this conflict, their war machines evolved greatly. Their tank variants, designed with limited roles in mind, consolidated into the Main Battle Tank, a jack-of-all-trades⁵ self-propelled gun used for direct fire and infantry support. They also evolved their troop carriers into Infantry Fighting Vehicles, used to transport infantry into heavily contested areas while fighting off swathes of enemies. These machines proved themselves greatly in the Third World War, a conflict spanning the same continent as the former World War, although much shorter, lasting from 1982 to 1987.

Flying machines were a different matter. Without the Magic Arts, levitation and flight were daunting tasks, especially with such heavy machines. The Earth-Human equivalent of a Levitator was the helicopter, using lift-blades in a similar fashion to a Dwarven Levitator, though using secondary lift-blades to control horizontal rotation rather than reaction wheels. There was also the airplane, using compressed air and artificial lift for propulsion rather than simple flight magic. Such limitations called for long airstrips for takeoff, meaning such machines were out of the question for importing. Helicopters did not require airstrips, allowing Histan to import them.

Earth-Human naval forces were mostly made for coastal defense and support for land invasion, though they quickly became a matter of power projection, seen by their "aircraft carriers," used as a water-based launch platform for flying machines. Similar to the navies of Yoren, their ships were ironclad, using large cannons to provide artillery for coastal invasions or to sink enemy fleets. Histan's naval ports built separate variants of the Hubs to accommodate ships as large as battleships.

Now, even though they had the permission and funds to reignite Transrealmology, the exact methods of astral projection needed for trans-realm transportation lay only in the hands of the Confederacy of High Mages. Worse still, Transrealmology was shunned amongst the Mages and was considered an atrocity, with the Highest Mages being left in a depression following the outlawing of the same Earth-Humans that they so helped bring to Yoren. Thus, it took almost a revolution of convincing until the New Duke remembered their economic crisis and, using his most reliable negotiation tactic, offered Φ10,000,000,000 in exchange for their assistance in Transrealmology. The Mages, seeing how this sum of yigs could bring their failing nation out of poverty, agreed to his terms and commissioned Wizardyne to construct a dedicated Trans-Realm Hub for the Earth-Humans, a feat of engineering not seen since the First Welcoming.⁶⁷ Once the Hubs were constructed on select army bases and calibrated to import 10,000 Earth-Humans from Earth-Revolutions 1940-2022, they were opened on the 45th of Nall, 253R.

Once the first Earth-Human militants were imported, it became apparent that their species was incredibly skittish. Many incidents flared up, though silenced at first, involving Hub operators being injured by Earth-Humans upon their arrival, though after sedation, they'd come to their senses and cooperate. Further troubles arose from convincing the Earth-Humans they were not in the Afterlife and that they were brought here to fight for Histan, though many objected on the basis that they were afraid of dying again. They were eventually given an option to deny service,⁸ though this option had many disadvantages tacked on, such as higher taxes and limited job opportunities due to the lack of citizenship, forcing them to serve the New Duke. As well as assimilating them into existing battalions, new ones were formed exclusively for Earth-Humans, such as airborne infantry and flying machine boarding parties (172nd Aeroborne and 19th Boarding Specialists, respectively). Those who piloted their war machine upon death would keep their role and their vehicle, while various other Earth-Human squadrons were trained on Histani hardware.⁹

It took some time and resources to adjust Earth-Humanity to Yoren armor conventions, what with fitting them with lance armor and thaumaturgical shielding. By 255R, the armor demands were met, and the Hubs were closed down. Following this, Earth-Humans were briefed on the ongoing Felimon War, a conflict just south of Histan that unraveled from Felimon president Jamen Rosmen's supposed threats against Histan.¹⁰ When they were deployed, they were given a choice between Histan service staffs and the gear they were issued on Earth, with most going with the latter, and just months after deployment, half of Felimon's militias were depleted. However, Earth-Human's involvement in Felimon was slowed following an incident in Western Histan.

The Nam Revolution

"Collins told us to drive the convoy East, about where Massachusetts would be. He said to just follow him until we got to the 'new outpost,' leading our Humvees alongside some Soviet tanks, T-62's and such, and a couple of old Grads. We saw some more convoys on the same road, Shermans, Urals, Merkavas, I think a couple of Panzers, all heading East. We got to the outpost and saw Histanis being driven out, like we were making room just for us. I only saw human people in that outpost."

Interview with a captured Earth-Human

By the time Earth-Humans were sent to war, many precautions were put in place to handle rogue Earth-Humans upon arrival. Therefore, Histan's native army was familiar with having to track down runaway soldiers and even squadrons, either talking them into returning to Earth-Human training centers or executing them and staying silent about their disappearance. This changed when a squadron from their 196th Infantry Brigade was imported from the Earth-Human country of Vietnam, where they almost immediately opened fire on Hub operators and went missing in western Histan on the 7th of Heln, 256R, prompting a search from Histan's 4th Nationguards.

Some days later, surveillance found the squadron in Kajmon Forest National Park¹¹, where the Nationguards began marching through the trail, using Soultrackers and eventually calling out their names when they failed to find them with tracking magic. As the Nationguards approached the Lokjah Bends in the southern end of the park, the 196th squadron revealed themselves in the thick of the forest to the Nationguard's left before their machine musketeer opened fire, killing 8 Nationguards and gravely injuring many more; a medevac arrived just as the 196th escaped the scene. They were found again by Histan special forces on the west end of the park and swiftly neutralized, though not before word got out about the shooting at Lokjah Bends.

When the media covered the shooting, the wedge driven between the Yoren people and Earth-Humans, which stemmed from the already-tragic First Welcoming, pushed down even harder. Politicians began peddling anti-Earth-Human propaganda, passing laws that put more pressure on Earth-Human soldiers, and even attempted to bring the Earthen Demilitarization Bill to Histan's high court, where it was voted down 14-4. Many radical groups quoted Fillik-the-Observant's Studies of Beyond: "Violence is second nature to an Earth-Human. Their entertainment programs are mostly centered on such matters, usually driving the plot of their stories in their favor. Their sports have two athletes engage in combat, expecting the audience to root for one athlete or the other. The most violent athlete always wins."¹²

The 196th Infantry Brigade made a public appearance on the 65th of Heln, denouncing the actions of their AWOL squadron, though these efforts hardly curbed the rising anger towards Earth-Humans. The hatred eventually whittled down to those who served under the United States in their Vietnam War, causing a massive buildup of pressure on said servicemen, which would cause them to spark the Nam Revolution on the 74th of Heln, when almost 18,000 Earth-Humans would return the hostility to Yoren natives through deserting their posts and hiding out in the eastern Histan jungles, threatening to fire on anyone who entered their "property," though they made exceptions for the swathes of Earth-Humans following suite, increasing their numbers to around 20,000.¹³ Histan's military refused to fire on convoys and helicopters mobilizing east to join the Revolution in fear of escalating the pressure further and beginning an armed conflict.

Histan's government responded by deploying 22,000 Nationguards to the border, starting extensive negotiations that slowly turned to threatening a military response. Earth-Humanity responded by moving a handful of infantry and anti-tank divisions to their faux borders. On the 89th of Heln, after ten days of waiting for someone to fire the first spell or round, the Nam Revolutionists would abruptly secede from Histan, forming the Federation of Mankind.

The Federation Revolts

"It's been probably twenty days, and they still won't turn off this damn music. The commanders told us to keep our headphones on and stay indoors, or even in the basements if it's too unbearable, but that shrill, shrill sound continues to echo through the villages. Two guys fired their RPKs into the air to drown out the music. How long will it take to armor landing ships, let alone battleships?"

Journal entry of an Earth-Human recovered from Federation Territory

Once they seceded, the Federation only made one demand: "Leave us alone." The widely accepted interpretation of this is "Do not intervene with our territory and allow us a life of peace," a passive enough demand to reel back to a peace-first approach for Histan to reclaim their land. However, Histan's Nationguards would move from forcing surrender to psychological distress to drive out the Earth-Humans. They set up Sonic Frequency Drivers and played traditional Kaskan melodies, Nalltime holiday music, and Scribe's Top 40 post-hurdy-gurdy grunge in an effort to annoy the Federation to the point of surrender. It was 39 days before the Nationguards came to terms with the Federation's sense of resilience and began mobilizing on their borders, placing Manamissile batteries and self-propelled aquastaffs near various checkpoints, though far enough away to not instigate a conflict at the time. One more demand for surrender was made before the land reclamation plans were finalized; they were entirely unaware of why the Federation was awfully quiet about the Nationguard's attempts to force an aforementioned surrender.

As it turns out, the secession was meant to be a smokescreen for Earth-Humanity's real plan: escaping to Eastern Yoren and beginning "nation-hopping," wherein they would march through West Yoren until they found a nation they could easily seize land from. As the Nationguards were attempting to drive the Earth-Humans out, they were dismantling the Histan Navy's Water Magic Reactive Armor, designed to absorb water-based magic attacks. The Earth-Human ships were also being kept in armored docks, hiding their operations long enough to stall out the Nationguards until they began loading into the ships. As they were preparing to hold down the dock from the inevitable land incursion, a Manamissile battery would fire a salvo at a landing strip containing 40 Earth-Human helicopters, only taking out 18 and killing 47 Earth-Humans, though it was a clear sign that Histan wasn't waiting for surrender any longer.

The Nationguards would find little resistance at the border when they began the land incursion, only seeing a handful of soldiers who stayed behind in watchtowers to buy the Earth-Humans at the docks some time, who were cut down by the immense water pressure of the aquastaffs. Problems arose when they came face to face with the World War Two era medium tanks. They stayed in the forest and ambushed the self-propelled aquastaffs, using shells similar to pre-magic tanks of the Berug Sprout War. The waterwalls¹⁴ deployed by the aquastaffs proved futile against the shells, and the tanks would eventually clear them out before relocating to the docks.

The foot soldiers would also adopt this same tactic, staying in the bush until a Nationguard squadron came looking for them and would promptly fire at them, using the vegetation for cover. The only viable counter was to send Nationguards into the forest to pursue the foot soldiers, though they weren't trained to romp through the trees and were otherwise considered "informal warfare" by Histan generals. The other option was to energy-bomb the forests with Manamissiles and flying machines; however, the Earth-Humans would move too quickly to predict their position for the Manamissiles, and flying machines were easily overwhelmed by anti-flying-machine cannons. Aquastaffs attempted to shield the flying machines using waterwalls, though they too were destroyed by fleets of tanks. Eventually, the full might of the Nationguards was sent to break through the Earth-Human blockades, though it was too late; the Earth-Humans had finalized their ships and began ordering a retreat to the docks to load the rest of the Earth-Humans. They had also acquired Histani ferries to transport the rest of their vehicles to Eastern Yoren, which would also carry the retreating Earth-Humans once they fell back to the docks and held off the Nationguards long enough to protect the ships until they all boarded.

The persistence of the Nationguards was proven at the Battle of the Docks, although there wasn't enough mechanized support to cover the infantry from the Earth-Humans. Despite only a few vehicles staying behind to defend the docks, they were effective at clearing the groups of infantry and holding off the aquastaffs when small arms fire failed against the waterwalls. The end of the battle was marked by the anti-flying-machine units being loaded into the ships, giving the Manabombers an opening to begin bombing runs, forcing the remaining Earth-Humans to fall back to the ships and rely on the anti-flying-machine cannons to fend them off as they began their voyage west. This plan would work out in the end, driving away the Manabombers, leaving the Histan Navy to send their battleships to stand toe-to-toe with the Earth-Human fleets. The navy would ultimately fail to halt the hardened destroyers and battleships of the Federation, as the ships had more cannons than the Histan Navy had armor. By the time the Federation had escaped Histan, 612 Earth-Humans and 801 Nationguards were killed.

When the Nationguards were scrutinizing the docks, they found maps detailing a retreat to the Northern Pole, where Histan wouldn't dare intercept them due to the harsh climate. They figured the Federation would die out a week after arrival and prompted Histan not to waste resources sinking the fleet and letting them be, thinking they were embarking on a suicide voyage. The Duke released a statement detailing their voyage, and assured Yoren that they'd hardly be a threat once they reached the pole, although he advised Eastern Yoren to take up arms in case they "took a hard right and duped us all."

The Federation came 120 cims shy of the Northern Pole before turning southeast towards the Confederacy of High Mages. It was there that the might and will of the Federation was first tested as they began the march South to enter a battle of such a large scale not seen since the Sprout War.

by JohnDoeMD

Strange scripts burn your eyes.
A librarian you ask, a translation you seek
A hand does rise, skin leathery and antique.

A-ed, you succeed
If I am A-ed then you must be Will-A
Indeed, I am quite far from the nexus
Will-A, how long will it take?
No idea A-ed, I lost track of the distance
So why contact me Will-A?
I remember myself losing hope, and being reassured by someone.
What if you cause a knot in the flow?
A-ed, you haven't and won’t tell anyone. I figured it was-
How senile, Will-A just because you don't remember doesn't mean it was yourself.
Yes… maybe you're right, I have been careless so far. Just wait and you will see my carelessness.
I sense sarcasm in your tone, Will-A.
A-ed, because this is the first point I've crossed beyond our theory of-
Stop! Before you knot Will-A.
My apologies A-ed, maybe I've been rash in my words.
Yes, I know myself. You were absolutely about to divulge something I think of.
…
You said “We” Will-A, do we work this out near the nexus?
I believe so, Its- ah
What?
Nevermind, you were right before hand A-ed.
I'm trying to think if… what I wish to ask risks knots…
Ah, Will-A you've learnt from what I said!
Hmm, A-ed. If you ask me the question, it won't cause knots
Am I really this stupid? Will-A, how would I know what you wish to ask?
If you think you're smart, A-ed. Make an educated guess.
Hmm, I… would…
..
I have no idea, Will-A
I know.
.
..
…
Who are you? How did you get in?
Don't worry. I'm a… long distance uncle. I've just gotten my test back and found out your my brothers kin (translator note: no gender neutral word for niece or nephew in english)

So dazzled and stuck, you can’t even speak
You flip to the back to have a little peak

Here hook this up Will-A
Sure.
A-ed you need a stronger cable to winch this, I think this one would snap
Hmm? Ah yeah, It’s already straining
Will-A, Isn’t it risky to give me information
I don’t think so A-ed, we’re so close to the nexus that knotting is hard
Will-A, do you think a super-position of me could exist beyond the nexus?
Hmm, I’ll research that as long as the technology is advanced enough to allow me.
…
So, flicking this will begin the nexus?
It does.
I’m starting to get tired. Do I do this tomorrow?
…
..
.
Right. It’s time
I feel so old, If I count time I’ll go mad
Im pulling the trigger to nexus
Why’d I do this?
Weird, I thought it would be instant
Why must my destiny be this
So that’s what I meant, I guess the nexus point is technically infinite

by StilettoApostate

Far from the first that Simeon Taylor had destroyed - he reminded himself as he flicked the blade clean of any blood. His conscience was always unburdened, he knew they were already dead. A sin to call human, even. With a flourish in perfect silence, Luxen was sheathed. Simeon noted his form was hasty, but he thought to let this one slide. This was no fencing strip.

His legs burned, he knew his way home through the dark but at this rate he’d have to take more discrete routes. Simeon was running out of time, the hour call for five was too long ago, it’ll be six any second. The warmth of his morning cloak was a blessing during the long cold nights but his outfit only got in the way now that he had to move quickly. He would have to leave it home next time, if there was a next time.

The things he saw defending the city many hours ago changed everything. He knew the existence of Anomalies meant this world had no true laws, facts are not real. But he could at least believe Anomalies were the enemy - as he’d been taught. But that… Abomination was working with the police. A mound of aching red flesh puppeteered by sharp, copper pipes and clockwork. The Chimera swung at something unseen, shafts of brass and teeth unfolding, snapping, cutting through its flesh which seemed at odds with the rest of its form. Swiping in a massive arc, cracking mechanically until it eventually crashed into the victim with its suddenly formed jaws. Shaking the street with a clang resembling a giant brass bell. He'd heard sounds like that before, hundreds of times during lockdowns. He had to tell his family.

They were all gone now, The Chimeras. Likely shifting to a smaller frame, then slithered into some tiny gutter or hiding in other dark places just out of sight. He continued his assault towards the palace. His lungs strained against his tight-fitting blouse, air hissing through his lips. Mary Street, past Richmond Place and through Bishop’s Avenue. The rocky, poorly paved road making an inconvenient and risky path to dash across, tearing at his leather boots which – though well used – we not used to circumstances like this, hopefully any scuffs can be polished out. The rest of the upperclassmen were privy to such details. Especially the rest of the Taylor's; his parents well included.

Then it happened. That all-too-familiar sound. Creaking, centuries old metal moans from high above. The sun finally began to open its eye. The giant bulb that perpetually remained lit, was only ever covered and never disabled. Its many eyelids crashing into each other as they whirred open.

Sim cursed out loud, then cursed internally at his recklessness. Not that anyone heard him above the commotion. Wasted thoughts, he thought, and composed himself. The sound will cover him. He can be reckless now, he has to be.

An ever-expanding ravine of blinding light, quaking as it widens, crawling over buildings as the bulb is rapidly unraveled. Colossal chains and rusted, dry metal screaming in unmaintained agony as the electronic speakers scattered across every street suddenly blared music in a futile attempt to drown out the noise. Both reverberating off the ceiling, and far, far out of sight echoing against the horizon - the cavern walls.
The sun was rising. The morning anthem had begun.

He thought about sacrifices, slipping into a dark alleyway. This was no shortcut, but the shadows were always his ally, his round glasses might catch the light without them and his colours would surely stand out. He cursed his shortsightedness, literally speaking anyway.

Each electronic speaker continued failing their attempts utterly to sync up with the others, the optimist’s interpretation would blame their distance between each-other rending harmony impossible, but the truth of the matter was their designer simply didn’t care enough. Sim barely slowed as he weaved through web-like piping. Most of it taking unnecessary twists and turns before reaching their destinations, if they even served a purpose.

Today the cacophony was a small blessing, Simeon thought; nearing his destination, as the heat of the sun crawled up his back and raced ahead of him. River street was ahead… He would need cover, or his tracks would echo through the entire City from that wide road. The Police had retired from their nightly duties and undoubtedly positioned themselves at their stations, everywhere. But Silence was also coming up, like clockwork Simeon knew it would be. The same as he’d always heard it every morning for the past 17 years. He could make it across the road, surely before-

The false sun announced awakening, now fully unrestrained. A series of deafening shrieks rang everywhere, as six building-sized pressurized pistons exploded into place, locking the many lids open in Six. Clear. Beats. The trumpets ceased, loosely choreographed with the ancient mechanisms making up the world he lived in, and then there was a pause. A silence.

Skidding to a halt just before the clearing, wincing and catching his breath. Simeon leant against the wall and mouthed silently. “A one… Two… Three…”

“… Allez!”

The speakers began to sputter the beginnings of a bass drum solo, and he ran across the road, rising in pace. Simeon’s rapid footsteps shared the faux-rhythm of the percussion as the piece continued. He was part of the terrible performance, his thin leather boots clanging against the iron fence of the palace grounds as he mounted it. With a flourish and a stumble into the dry brown grass, the chorus was here.

He flinched.

Everyone Flinched.

A dozen worn trumpets were released from the shackles of the score. Pinging off every copper pipe. Quaking through every drain and gutter. The bricks themselves trembled and longed desperately to escape their mortar binding and shatter to pieces on the pavement.

Sim was reduced to instincts alone, tripping but ultimately recovering. His thoughts now disintegrated by sensory over-stimulation. The stars - when they finally felt like doing so - began to close. Drifting to sleep now that the sun had claimed its wrathful dominion over the rocky sky. Each star expending enormous, audible effort to retire. Hundreds of tiny, rusty mechanisms contributing – as they always did – to the city’s well-worn wake up call.

His third-story bedroom window finally came into view, left discretely ajar. Blending in with the dozens and dozens of other windows making up the walls of his family’s impressive home. His heart pounding in his ears, his head aching from stress, his legs losing almost all sensation. One last push.
Every instrument began fighting for dominance in a reprising bloodbath of desperate and confused patriotism. He drew Luxen.

Charging at the house and launching off a lower windowsill with effort he didn’t have, kicking off the otherwise useless drainage pipe that ran by his window, and wedging his saber between the window flaps, at long last, sim crashed his windows open and collapsed onto the floor of his room. His companion clattered beside him.

Halt! Safe.

His clothes were surely getting dusty on the floor but he hadn’t the room to care about that, now that the numbness across his body quickly vanished all of his joints were searing, bruises he didn’t notice were coming to light, and found himself coughing as if his lungs were finally catching up with him, and punishing him for the abuse they received. Luxen rang continuously even after rolling to a halt, as if groaning with him.

He was back in the palace, alive. None had seen him, and the last echoes of the national anthem were finally fading. The echoing, aged, choking, head-splitting anthem-

“The time is Six O’clock. All is well”

-of UnLondon.

by Less_0

by Ecronak

A great white shark swims, slowly, deliberately contorting its scaled body, its teethes shine when it opens its mouth to breath out, its big, empty eyes roll and turn madly, shining too when it opens them to breath out, its gills pulsate and shine a red hue when it opens them to breath out in.

The mount, a mound in the distance slowly pulsates too, its mass mess rising and falling as at the breathing of a massive creature, another red hue comes from the core of the pile, it looks like the coveted covered entrance of Hell. The bodies making this pile lie, in truth, motionless, only shaken and lifted by the breathing of the mound. They are made with incredible impossible details. The most detailed, even if only 6,37 cm (2.51 inches) tall, has distinct hair that can only be seen through a microscope. How though ?

(Fakeness Adores Questions)

The rest of the canvas is absolutely, obscenely, bare, naked, empty; not empty like the shark’s eyes, these are empty like death : they hold nothing, they mean nothing, they promise nothing, they ask nothing, they demand nothing, but they exist. The rest of this painting simply does not exist, there is nothing there, nothing exists in thi snare this bare void, not even death, this vast emptiness is not black as we most often describe void, because if it were, there would be something there, the pigments, the effort, the will to fill this void with ill black, no, there is only the strange white of the blank canvas. And even then, it is not empty enough for the artist’s taste : there is still the history, the effort, the dead tree’s cells; so, in rage as he sees he cannot paint emptiness, he punches the canvas, punches a hole through this maddening task. Then, as he removes his hand, he sees it : the emptiness, not emptiness of will, not even of emotions, he did fill the hole in the canvas with rage; but the canvas itself, the support of his rage, his anger, his painting, doesn’t exist anymore. He made art with no support, and as he realizes this, he sees the art in all its glory, he basks in the light of an art which he cannot see, which cannot be seen, heard, tasted, touched nor smelled but can only be felt, can only be lived.

And, as the artist sees true art lying forth for the first time, a dread washes over him. He fears, and, precipitously precariously, he takes the knife that had been laying on his table, observes the 25,025 cm (9.58 inches) blade, admires the fine craftsmanship of the hand-made damascus edge, notices the slight curve at the tip of the blade, where the artisan was tired, along with every detail of the wood, every slight dent. And he plants the blade in the heart of his art, giving his life for from the process.

This painting, with the punch-sized hole in the down-left corner of the 3.657 m (12 feet) wide, 5,884 m (19.16 feet) long canvas, with a pile of human bodies and a mad, stabbed shark, at the center, both entirely inscribed in a 27,64 cm (10.88 inches) wide and 43,82 cm (26.86 inches) long rectangle, this painting was sold for 978 billion 466 million and 500 thousand euros on the 7th of October 1989, putting the man who bought it in debt for 8 generations. And the shark is so goofy it could barely be considered art.

The painting was broken in half in 1996, when the man, who was 57, accidentally ran it over with a tractor while he was drunk on homemade vodka. Wasteful.

(Fuck Mean yoU ?)

by Castaigne

I took a knife with me. The stones gave way to gravel, and the gravel gave way to dirt. The path wound up, and the trees started to stretch. A river appeared, brown as a boot.

I slipped in the mud, and my knife sank into the riverbed. I fished for it but could not find it.

An undine looked up at me.

“What are you looking for?”

“My knife fell in the water.”

“Is this your knife?”

She held a waterlogged arm up to me. I refused.

“Is this your knife?”

She held a blind head up to me. I refused.

“You are honest,” she said. “Here is your knife. Don’t refuse.”

She gave me a piece of bone, sharp on one side, and she gave me the arm and the head.

I crossed the river and entered the forest. I heard the crunch of many feet on dead leaves.

“Alas, the lass is lost,” said the head. “Alas, the lass is lost.”

I stabbed its swollen tongue. It shut.

The canopy grew dense. Darkness hid the road. I stumbled in the daynight.

“The witch comes close to catch you and grind your bones,” the head said. “The witch comes close to catch you and grind your bones.”

I was grabbed. A shape straddled me, and fingers coiled around my throat. I looked up and saw two burning eyes blinding me. I fished for my knife while I tried to pry her hands. I saw another shape move. The witch choked. Her fingers came loose. The arm was crushing her neck.

I toppled her and plunged the boneshard into her heart until she stopped wriggling. I gouged her eyes and put them inside the head. I saw the path once more and continued.

I heard the jingling of bells. A motley fool walked beside me.

“A riddle, a riddle,” he said, showing his black teeth. “Answer it, and I will leave. Refuse, and I make you my sleeve.”

“Ask,” I said.

The fool said his riddle.

Down he goes, up he comes
Up he goes, down he comes

“Let me think,” I said and leaned against a tree. I threw up the arm, and the arm pulled me up a branch.

The fool gave a moan, got on all fours, and started to climb the tree. I climbed higher, and he climbed after me. We reached the top and struggled. I tried to stab him with the boneshard, but it broke.

We fell. The arm grabbed another branch and pulled me up. The fool slumped on the ground, his limbs twisted. His bells fell silent.

Something crawled out of his skin — spiderlike — ran away into the shadows.

The boy climbed down, put the skin on his back, and went on his way.

The trees parted. The hills loomed. Up on the slope, I saw them take her towards the summit.

“Storm, storm, storm,” the head said. “Born, born, born.”

I scaled the crag with my hands and feet. On the summit, they saw me.

“Grab the fool,” one of them said. “Grab the fool.”

I threw the arm at him, and he stopped shouting. The second, I kicked down the mountain. The other two ran, but I caught one of them and squeezed its neck.

It started to rain. I approached my sister. She was laid on top of a pyre on top of a mound. I tried to wake her, but she didn’t. I was late again. The wind picked up. Thunder crashed somewhere. The mountain started to smoke.

I had to try again. I still had a chance. I leaned against the mound and closed my eyes.

“Alas, the lass is gone,” the head said. “Alas, the lass is gone.”

I no longer heard it, nor the rain, or the wind, or the thunder.

I fell awake. Dawn lay green as a corpse. From the window, I saw them abscond with my sister.

by smalltootheddog

Across the skies of the Stormlands, they know nothing of serpents. The people there, the cloud-chasers, are vast filterfeeders, easily a hundred spans wide. Though they make few tools, they are wise scholars who watch the cyclings of the winds and the stars. They scar themselves with freezing helium rain to record their knowledge on their very skins. The cloud-chasers have demonstrated, with mathematical precision, that it is quite impossible for life to arise anywhere but on another gas giant. Terrestrial planets simply lack the volatility that life requires. They are too small for chance to favor abiogenesis.

Serpents, therefore, do not exist. The speculations by wild dreamers that, on other planets, long, thin organisms might burrow through solid matter are just that—speculations. The cloud-chasers who claim to have projected their consciousness to other worlds and seen these beings are delusional or liars.

But after the most violent storms—the ones that send dozens of cloud-chasers spiraling towards the crushing depths—pass, the cloud-chasers whisper tales of their compatriots' fate over electromagnetic fields. They have gone to the realm of the dead, they say, far within the Stormland's core. But there is no rest of them there. Instead, they are catalogued by the Lord of the Depths, who hoards all the knowledge of the dead. The afterlife is neither paradise nor hell, but a vast field of carefully arranged hides.

The brave—or the foolhardy, perhaps—sometimes plunge as deep as they can, before hydrogen toxicity kills them, to try and reach out to the Lord of the Depths and ask questions of him. Few return. It's said that most petitioners are taken by the Lord of the Depths and added to his collection before they can ask a single question. Only a few ask their questions and escape intact, and these report strange visions: Space twisted in on itself, pockets where the air is still, places where gravity is absent or turned on its side.

The cloud-chasers could, it's agreed, avoid being collected by the Lord of the Depths simply by keeping their skin clean. He's not interested in them, just the knowledge on their skins. But death is inevitable, and to the cloud-chasers it is better to fly beautifully for a brief time than to wander unrecognized for an eternity.

In the Lands of the Conqueror Worm, they say that the Worm once had a brother, one who whispered into its ears that its wants were folly. Over and over again he told it to abandon the path of war, for it would surely die. But never did the Worm listen. Indeed, they say, the Worm struck against its brother long before it created its kingdom of rot. It spurned his wisdom and supped on his flesh, thinking that by consuming his essence it could grow powerful enough to conquer a pantheon.

The brother survived, but only just, and slithered into dark lands beneath the earth, fearing what might follow. But the Conqueror Worm put its brother out of its mind and turned its gaze to the heavens. The rest, of course, is history.

Except for the postscript. Because they also say that long after the Worm finally died from the spear plunged into its back, when vast stretches of land had become inimical to life itself and it seemed as if the entire world would drown in the Worm's blood, strange springs appeared across the world, like venom bubbling up from the rock. There, and only there, the people found refuge. The rot never spread to the springs' shores, and their waters could return life to the wormlands.

The Emerald Hegemony have no legends of their own, not any more. Those they hear are, except for exceptional cases, swiftly forgotten. Most of their worlds are sterile; the only inscriptions are functional. But the core of their territory is littered with the remains of a long history. There are mausoleums and monuments, dating from long before their transformation into the present form. What remains is scarred by war and worn away by time. The Hegemony still inhabits those planets. Many of them walk within sight of those ruins every day. Yet they care nothing for them, and this apathy is the only thing that's preserved them. They could destroy them; the Hegemony is quite meticulous. But unnecessary destruction is a waste of time and energy.

If you could walk on those worlds, you'd see the same motif on many murals within great buildings of a long obsolete warship-grade alloy, with windows of diamond. A vast four-headed serpent, stretching across the galaxies towards the Milky Way. From eight fangs drip venom, and below are clustered each of the four species of the Hegemony. The Xevion soak in it, drinking the precious fluid through their skin. A great colony of Uthraan dwells in a basin, the venom running over them like a waterfall and pooling around them. Yhranc clamber up rocks to get even a little closer to the serpent's fangs. The Mkeun wrestle over each other to sip mere droplets of the venom.

If you could walk on those worlds, you might see that these buildings, though corroded and etched by acid rain, are the youngest ruins remaining, and a skilled archaeologist would know at once that they are millennia old. They're scattered throughout Hegemony cities, surrounded by modern buildings of bone and sinew. Perhaps what came after was replaced with the Hegemony's modern bustling metropoli.

Perhaps what came after was erased. For on some of the murals, someone's changed the imagery. The serpent is painted over, absent. The figures below are splashed with green and sickly yellow. If you could walk on those worlds, you might see that that graffiti is the most recent that remains within the territory of the Hegemony.

If you could walk on those worlds, you might have a glimmer of insight into how the Hegemony became what it is today.

But you can't walk on those worlds. No one but the Hegemony ever will, and they don't spare even a glance for their history. Eventually, the ruins will finally crumble, and all trace of them will vanish from the cosmos.

The Hand speaks a million stories from a thousand mouths. The Serpent is their leader, one says, and whispers to them from the depths of the Library. Another shouts them down—they have no leaders; the Serpent is just an exemplar, someone to emulate but not to obey, a Wanderer throughout the cosmos. A third tells both that the Serpent doesn't even exist. The Hand merely took an animal that's unfairly maligned as a symbol.

Many others sit in the corner, puzzled by the argument; they've never really thought beyond the name.

On Blorsk, they say that the Serpent dwelled in the ocean and was a patron to the people of the coasts. Her bulk offered them shelter from the monsoons. When she slithered, she carved paths through the mangroves for their ships to pass through. The fish sought shelter from her close to shore, becoming easy prey for the nets of fishers. When she stirred in her slumber, rough spheres of metal washed onto shore.

The people of the shore used these gifts skillfully, but not wisely. They built vast towers that any storm would easily topple. Their ships grew increasingly large and laden with goods until they could scarcely move. The fish were devoured with no thought paid to their numbers. And they used the spheres of metal to build vast machines of steel which poisoned the coast.

But the Serpent did not leave. She whispered secrets into the ears of the rulers of the steel cities, telling them of new alloys to reinforce their towers, of new engines that could send ships speeding across the sea, of algal farms that would grow enough food to sustain themselves while the fisheries regenerated, of new chemicals that would neutralize poison in both water and air.

The people of the shore turned these gifts to wicked ends. They warred amongst themselves, building vast fortresses and fleets. They kidnapped the peoples of the rivers and kept them as slave-armies, feeding them algal gruel while they ate fish themselves. They used poison against cities, sure in their ability to clean up the damage afterwards. They fought and they fought until only one city remained, ruling over an empire of wastes.

Still the Serpent did not leave them. She showed the people of the rivers the ways to hidden paths that crisscrossed the stars. She told them of grand cities, of eldritch plains of grass, of places where the stars are crimson, of places where forests shift before your very eyes. She told them of Carcosta, of the Wailing City, of the Immortal Empire.

The people of the rivers used these gifts as best they could. They scattered across the cosmos, seeking refuge for themselves and help for those back home. But the Immortal Empire held no mercy in their hearts for the people of the river. When the star-people descended to Blorsk, they only wanted the river people's dead.

Then, the Serpent did leave Blorsk. Her tears would have poisoned the ocean with salt, but there was no longer any life to call it home.

The Desert, that eternal backwater, has lots of snakes. But the Caravan only tells stories about one—Iyuda, Grandfather Serpent himself. Iyuda, it's said, crawls on his belly opposite the Caravan. When they're in Yearhome, he's near the plains. When they're crossing through the Pyandor Reach, Grandfather Serpent's in the karst fields. His square clay scales are scribed with words from across the Desert, across the sea, and across the plains, and as he rubs up against the pinnacle karst, against the badlands, against rock outcroppings, they're tugged free. Only later does the Caravan come across them.

None of the people of the Desert know what the words on the scales mean, but they're all ringed with the image of a serpent. It's said that if anyone could track down Grandfather Serpent, he could decipher the writing on the scales. But the Caravan is always on time. The Desert itself ensures it. So the Caravan can never catch up with Grandfather Serpent. They've hired the best trackers to try and find him, but they find nothing or vanish into the Desert.

They don't ever seem to die, though. No one's ever found bodies, and when they vanish, sometimes they leave behind trails. Tracks head across the dunes, fur is caught on karst, silk trails lead down mountains, but abruptly the trails just end. There's no sign of misfortune, no sign of disorientation. They must have gone somewhere, but no one knows where. The afterlife? The sky-world? Perhaps Grandfather Serpent himself spirited them away to some distant place.

All these legends are truth. All these legends are lies.

by Plilt

by Din-Bidor